lip sync set up in storyboard pro for GIW, 30 November, 2021

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0pSB5hd_Fo

Storyboard Pro- not very interesting.  Not sure if I want to lip sync this early in the pipeline and then lip sync AGAIN with the final assets.

Lip Sync research, Adobe Character Animator, 22 August, 2021

Adobe Character Animator lets you rig a 2D puppet and have it do lip syncing in real time.  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD9-zrGxrs4

How does this work?  Can it "listen" to a song and then work with the puppet to match the voice to the lips?

It looks like the program identifies the performer's mouth (see red lines in live view box at upper right of screen)

This tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka6ikizX0pY

Shows how you lip sync JUST THE MOUTHS in CA and then export them to After Effects or Mojo.  The software will analyse outside audio and match the lips.

Setting up the head puppet in CA tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GKCw4f1UrI

Incredible!!!  Do this with GIW "Today's the Day!"

Test Anna or Kath singing

Holy moly, exciting stuff.

Lip Syncing Research Post 3: After Effects, 8 March, 2021

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtDcZCDqMC4

I stumbled across this great tiny tutorial on how to do animation lip syncing in After Effects.  It's very easy to follow and only uses four phonemes.  

I think that I will film a short sequence in stop motion and then use the different software packages to lip sync a short line of dialogue.  This will give me a baseline to compare results against.  

This is a blog post on using Adobe Animate:

http://www.animationkolkata.com/blog/2019/09/13/effortless-lip-syncing-adobe-animate-cc/

Lip Syncing Research: After Effects Pipeline, PD Post 2, 30 November, 2020

 After Effects how to build a Mouth Rig for Lip Syncing, Gigantic Slider

Shy layers will help keep project timeline tidy!  Click on everything you want to hide and then select big shy icon at top of column.

This tutorial has a free download with materials to use to try this technique.

Joystick slider is how this guy animates his heads and changes from one mouth shape to another.  Joystick slider plug-in is for sale.  Is this something I should get with my PD money?

How to use joystick slider.

Lip Syncing Basic Research, PD 2020 Post 1, 30 November

SIT has procured Papagayo  and Lip Sync Pro for me to research as part of my Professional Development.  I've chosen to focus on lip syncing for the whole 10 days because I'm shy about doing it and therefore shy about teaching it.  If I want to continue animating children's music videos, learning how to do this efficiently and effectively will come in handy.  We already have Adobe Animate and Character Animator software and Toonboom also has lip syncing modules.    I will also look at After Effects and their lip syncing tools.  

My intention is to create a sequence of animation and lip sync in each of the software packages so I can compare and contrast the pipeline and results.  I'm going to use assets I'm already working with for Follow Your Heart, Waste Free Wanda, and Girl and the Imagination Warehouse.  I'm going to concentrate on 2D and Stop-motion animation over 3D because those are the assets I have handy and the kind of animation that I'm working with most frequently.  As part of my research, I can look into 3D lip sync but I don't anticipate that I will be doing any practical tests in Maya.

Lip syncing gets done after all other steps of the animation have been finished.  This includes facial expressions, eye brow movements, etc.  3 Steps to Improve your Lip Syncing. 

Puppetry, like Kermit the Frog or other Sesame Street characters, has some good tips on getting lip syncing right.  The puppeteer responds to the biggest beats of what's being said and not to hitting everything, which ends up with a floppy floppy mouth.

Don't spend too much time overanalysing every mouth shape when speaking- this leads to overdone lip syncing.

Phonemes:  There are 26 letters in the English alphabet but 44 sounds are created using those letters. The letters are then broken into consonants and vowels. 

https://www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/44-phonemes-in-english.html