Assignment: An Intro to Lip-synch

Assignments / Handcrafted Techniques February 18, 2019

Contributed by Stephen Leeper, Central Michigan University

This project was inspired by Norman McLaren’s drawn on film leader collaboration with jazz great Oscar Peterson, “Be Gone Dull Care”.

Learning Outcomes

Break down a piece of dialogue into its phonemes and match them to animation using Dragonframe.
Experiment with abstract pattern animation in the context of Visual Music Animation as pioneered by animators Oskar Fischinger and Norman Mclaren.

Preparation

This collaborative assignment functions as an exquisite corpse, where each student has a section of a song and the resulting animation can be edited together into a longer work. Though any song or dialogue can be used, scat has the benefit of forcing students to specifically pay attention to sounds rather than words.

Watch the following films as inspiration for the assignment.

Visual Music by Oskar Fischinger: https://vimeo.com/album/3111432

Begone Dull Care – Norman McLaren

Oral Hygiene – David Fain

Sarah Vaughan – Scat Blues – 1969

Assignment

Design Phonemes: Take some time to research animated character designs. Then based on one of the three mouth sets provided, design your phonemes and construct a full set that you feel compliments the assigned audio clip.

Breakdown Audio: Following the Dragonframe Lip-Sync Tutorial, import the psd file for your chosen mouthset, break down the voice track and assign phonemes accordingly. Play back the audio with assigned phonemes and if you like what you see export your test.

Test Animated Background Patterns: Test background animation by swapping various patterns under the camera in Dragonframe. You should animate about 240 frames (about 10 seconds at 24fps) exhibiting a variety of experimentation. Export movie with audio 16:9 MP4 at 24fps from Dragonframe.

Experiment with timing. Swap out patterned sheets in 1’s, 2’s and 3’s at 24fps. Play them back at different speeds and note how different speeds create different kinetic sensations on the screen.
Try controlling the intensity of animation by juxtaposing patterns that contrast compared to patterns that are similar. What happens when you keep the color and shapes the same while changing the scale and orientation from frame to frame? Or preserve the scale and orientation while changing color and shape?
Notice how vertical patterns speed up the animated image while horizontal patterns cause it to stutter and slow down.
Consider the underlying rhythm of the music (not just the scat) and see how you can match or compliment the rhythm with the patterns

Animation test by UMBC student Will Kraft

Final Animation: Final animation should be done by swapping background patterns in a rhythm informed by the previous testing while simultaneously replacing phonemes following the frame-by-frame breakdown as exported to your Dragonframe Checksheet. Beside swapping phonemes, your mouth should also translate up, down and from side to side in ways that complement the music you are animating too.

Swap patterns to animate background.
Replace Phonemes as indicated in DF Checksheet.
Animate the position of changing mouth shapes up, down and from side to side to accentuate performance.