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Mouth Shape Example from Steven Universe

stevencrewniverse’s Mouth Chart vs Steven singing “Cookie Cat”.

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Lip Sync

I added a previously recorded audio track to a video of the frames.

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Finishing the animation

The sketch frames become line art images with distinct lines and without shading:

The frames are shaded and colored to the give the animation more life:

Finally, a background is added to finish the scene:

Tutorial:

Add background in GIMP

[”Steamed Windows Curtain” | pexels.com]

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Inbetweens

An inbetween is a drawing between keyframes. Tweens help smooth out the animation and create the illusion of movement.

I added inbetweens to my original rough sketch:

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Keyframes

A keyframe in animation is a drawing that defines the significant or extreme pose a character holds during an action. 

Each pose of the tiger is a start and/or stop point for what may become a smooth sequence.

[Cartoon Animation | Preston Blair | page 102]

The example shows the significant poses for the body, but I can make keyframes to describe the face:

Here is a rough sketch of four keyframes of a cat yawning. The animation isn’t smooth but is enough to describe the action.

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Mouthchart for Steven Universe

Drawn by Lead Character Designer Danny Hynes and Supervising Director Ian Jones-Quartey

Once all of the audio is in the right place, our track-readers use mouth charts like these to tell the animators which mouths to use.

For instance, “Cookie Cat!” would be “JEJK JDJ”

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Hi there!! Are you using anything else besides firealpaca? This is a good idea for genius hour and I am thinking of doing the same for my genius hour project. I am scared that I can't make gifs on fire alapca. I love how you post every step woith screenshots. - KW (i don't have tumblr)

Hello KW and thanks for visiting and for your kind words! I use firealpaca for drawing. It’s free and I’m comfortable with it. I actually use GIMP to animate the frames (as of this post, you can’t export a GIF from firealpaca). I think these tutorials might help:

Create frames for a GIF using FireAlpaca

Create a GIF from FireAlpaca frames

I have a table of contents for my first genius hour project.

It’s called Genius Hour, but I am not a genius! I’m learning, too. Don’t be too ambitious and start simply, a two-frame animation. Then add a frame or two in between.

Please feel free to update me on your progress, and let me know if you set up a blog. Good luck!

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Lip Sync Tutorial

Domics is a popular animation YouTube channel. This is one of his most popular videos, a lip sync tutorial.

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Phonemes

Gary C Martin is a  freelance artist and Mac OS X developer. He has a great website filled with very helpful tutorials. His most viewed tutorials are his Preston Blair and Extended Phoneme mouth shape tutorials.

Phonemes are single units of sound. There are 44 phonemes in English.  [What’s a phoneme? | Phonemic Chart]

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Preston Blair Mouth Shapes

Preston Blair was an influential animator for Disney and MGM. Here are his standard mouth shapes.

My next task is try recognize these mouth shapes in an animated movie or show.

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Run Cycle

Bear run cycle.

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Wanted to change the banner for this blog.

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Squash and Stretch Warmup

Flour bag practice.

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Squash and Stretch Warmup

Ball bounce practice.

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Genius Hour II

I’m back for another Genius Hour! I’d like to expand on GIFs and animation by studying and making a lip-synced animation. I’ll use this blog for posting tutorials.

This GIF is just an experiment with mouth and face movements for a yawning cat. (I actually don’t know what I’m doing yet.)

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Introduction

Tutorials

Capture frames for a GIF from a video using VLC 

Create a GIF from video frames 

Duplicate Layers in GIMP

Create frames for a GIF using FireAlpaca

Create a GIF from FireAlpaca frames

Add background in GIMP 

Extra

VLC and GIMP

FireAlpaca

Principles of Animation

Run Cycle of a Cat

Flight Cycles 

Reflections and goals

[”Lonely Lightbulb stock video” | gettyimages.com]

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Reflections and goals

Reflections:

I had so much fun during my Genius Hour! My questions to myself were:

Can I make an animated scene and share a tutorial that could help others to make their own? What software will I need? How can I share a tutorial with my class?

Watching youtube videos of talented animators and favorite animated TV shows and movies seems fun at first, but you can easily be buried under all of the inspiration and research. I limited myself to some of Disney’s twelve basic principles of animation, The Animator’s Survival Kit [both are considered the most influential books for animators | digitalmedisfx.com] and three animators (DarkmaneTheWerewolf , Michel Gagné, Toniko Pantoja). 

I chose these animators after looking at several others because they have careers in animation (Disney, Dreamworks, etc.) and studied animation in college. They are passionate artists and have posted their work online so their animation process could be studied by people like me who are just fans and like to draw. They also use a variety of software, including GIMP which is what I wanted to learn.

I was also inspired that these artists posted their own tutorials. There are a lot of tutorials for FireAlpaca, GIMP, and making GIFs, so I’m not posting anything new. I just thought it would be fun to see if I could make a tutorial to prove to myself that I had learned something.

I don’t know if I posted the “best” way to make GIFs, and if I continue to create them, I’ll probably realize later that I made some mistakes.

I love to draw and now I feel I have some tools that add another dimension to my 2D drawings. I’ve always been inspired by things I read about or saw in movies or out in the world and would sketch series of drawings. Now I can animate those drawings, paying attention to the physics. I hope becoming a more observant artist will help me become a better student that doesn’t miss details in class.

Goals (maybe my next Genius Hour projects?):

Learning how to lip-sync a voice to an animated scene.

Making animations smoother using inbetweening.

Making complicated animations with many frames, maybe using 3D software like Blender.

Making animated GIFs is a lot of fun and they’re really popular online. I think I’d like to continue posting GIFs that are from my favorite shows and movies and my own drawings. It’s “ART”!