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Animated a cartoon character mouth
What is the best way to achieve this effect? I’ve been doing this lately by adding a oval mask onto a solid black layer and then keyframing and altering the Mask Shape property to match the audio. However, I find this VERY tedious and rather tiresome. Is there a better and easier way to do this? It’s also very hard to keep a consistent shape in doing it this way. I’m relatively new to AE and would just like to know how to do this with more ease. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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9 Replies
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I just did a “monty python” type animation where I cut out the head in Photoshop, cut out the mouth/chin, then blackened the head’s mouth portion. Then used liquify on the mouth/chin to get two or three different openings. Don’t forget to keep an original head & mouth/chin. Laid down my narrative in AE and went to work with keyframes. It was a P.I.A. but came out good and everyone laughed (it was M.P. style, after all)…
Hope that helps.
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What I would do is create a bunch of different shaped mouths on your character or whatever in Photoshop, one for each sound (I think there are about 8. You can find them in any animation “How to” book). Then bring them into AE as a compostion and just animate the different shapes’ oppacities according to the sound that’s being made. Make sure to parent your mouth shapes to the head too. Still a bit tedious, but better than reshaping a mask in AE.
HTH,
Jim -
I’m gonna add to what Jim has already said.. You can use twixtor to blend in and create extra frame for those lip movements. I did mine with 15 fps comp, then i imported that comp and use twixtor to change the 15 to 29.97. I was pretty pleased with it.
Good luck
P
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I find using masks to be the easiest.
Create a black layer with an add mask on it to create a mouth shape.
Record the mouth shape with a keyframe for mask shape, starting 1 minute or so in to the composition.
Hit the * key on your numeric keypad to make a comment. Double click on the triangle that appears and make a comment to help you remember the shape (i.e. TH F SS, etc.)
Move forward 1 second.
Repeat.
Then go back to where your audio starts and copy and paste keyframes to fit your audio. The masks will transition on their own. No Twixtor necessary.
Matthew Reithmayr
Doulos Multimedia -
This is basically the method, the only thing I would do that might save you a few keystrokes is make filmstrip of all your mouthshapes, one on each frame, then use time remap to switch from mouth to mouth.
New York-based Editor-Compositor
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I’ve had great success using CC Split for cartoon mouths. Use the animation assistant to create audio keyframes and use an expression pick whip to tie in the split value to the audio. You may need or want to add a multiplyer ( ie *10 ) onto the end of the expression if the mouth changes aren’t big enough.
Hope that helps as its a really easy (lazy?) method of doing cartoon mouths.
Graham
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Actually, I do this in a similar fasion, but I use time remapping with mouth shapes – here’s an example:
https://www.allbetsareoff.com/Cow_Stuff/FACE.zip
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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com -
I have a video here I did for some friends. I can’t seem to find the AE file. Like it was explained before I cutout the jaw and made 2 layers in photoshop. I then animated the precomp head and jaw to move over 1 sec. Then I placed these 4 precomps (1 per head) into the main comp. Then based on time markers per the layer I set the time remap to sync with each voice in the song (I did this by using the * key on the num pad during an audio preview).
Here is the link.
https://jmhooton.iweb.bsu.edu/joel/final.movIf anyone wants the AE file let me know and if I find it I will send it to you.
Joel
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Man, that was funny.
Check out the file I posted – it uses 5 or 6 phonemes, and time remapping to bring them up (So you litterelaly just type a number to bring up the mouth you want), and it works really well.
What I do is hold down CTRL while I scrub, and based on the sound I hear, I type in a number that represents the mouth (So B, P, M might be # 3 – or frame 00.00.00.03 in the nested comp).
Anway, check it out – we were using this method at Nickelodeon for several projects, which is where i picked it up.
—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com
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