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In this video we will look at how to create good looking
mouth positions for your 2d characters.
What we look at right now is how to create an efficient setup of 9 mouth positions.
So if we look at the 9 positions that are displayed here,
you can see that there are several elements to take into account in order to create appropriate
positions for the various words your character will be saying.
There is the jaw opening, the teeth and tongue, as well as the puckering of the lips.
Looking at these mouths positions a little more in depth,
you can see that we have an “A” mouth which is basically your average mouth opening.
There is the “closed” mouth providing us with a neutral reference point.
Then we have the “consonants” position that will be used for most
of the consonants in the English language.
As other vowels we have the “E” mouth as well as the “O”
and the “UWQ” that will be used for U, W and Q sounds.
Often times these 6 positions would be enough for your average cartoon animation,
but in order to have an even more accurate lip synchronization
between the audio files and what the characters mouth does,
we will create alternate consonants that put the lips, teeth, and tongue in the spotlight.
As you can see on this “L” mouth position, the tongue touches the upper teeth,
kind of a spinoff of the “A” mouth position, with the mouth opened a little narrower.
“MBP” in this case is a variant of the closed mouth.
We also have the “FV” position where we can see the upper teeth sort of biting on the lower lip.
Now let’s look at a similar example from Preston Blair, where we can the same rules applied to
most of the mouth positions, but with the complete head squashing and stretching.
So we have the “A”, the “E”, the “O” and the “UWQ”,
so the 4 key vowels used for English lipsync animation.
Then we have the “consonants” used for the vast majority of the consonants.
We have a very good example of the “FV” position,
where we can really see the lower lip being compressed by the biting of the upper teeth.
Again similar to the “A” we have the “L” position with the tongue touching the upper teeth.
And lastly “MBP” in an exaggerated cartoon fashion with the head fully squashed
in comparison to the O’s fully stretched look.
What we have just looked at is by no means the ultimate mouth position setup.
But, it is a very good starting point in understanding how lipsyncing works,
and generally understanding how to achieve the look you want for your characters.
Thank you for watching this presentation, for more information or to download the trial version of Lipsync MX,
visit the Lipsync MX website at www.lipsyncmx.com
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