Lip Sync - Shape Notes

[Rodney]

Once upon a time I was attending the wrapup gathering at Martin's house for initial foray into 'Tin Woodman of Oz' and suddenly felt the urge to depart wisdom to Martin Hash. Martin had just revealed he had a boxful of the original Preston Blair books on Animation and wow, what treasures they were*. With regard to the Preston Blair approach to lip sync I explained that I thought it should only take four or five shapes to account for all that was required for lip sync**. Martin graciously nodded and smiled as if to say, 'thanks for stating the obvious Rodney' and the conversation pressed on to other things.

 

But the idea of using limited shaping for lipsync still reoccurs from time to time.

As this is something I've wanted to explore for awhile but lack the musical skill to properly investigate I thought it might be worth exploring or at least setting into a more proper perspective here in the forum.

 

Firstly, the general down-side...

This whole realm of interest is not unlike use of mechanical methodologies such as use of an automated dopesheet to drive movement (lipsync or otherwise). In A:M this would extend to such plugins as the Midi or Amplitude plugins, or any other method to use data to articulate movement. This is akin to programming using a script or expression to state 'for every x do y'.

 

For the uninitiated 'shape note singing' is the basic genesis of the idea.

Shape note singing, often referred to as 'Sacred Harp' due to the hymnals that first were published for its use, was introduced in order to expedite the teaching of music where other methods were considered harder used.

 

As near as I can tell there are two primary approaches to shape note (singing). The first uses four notes and the second seven (to account for all the notes in the Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti scale. The four notes used in the former are 'Fa, Sol, La, Mi'. Although I am aware of no direct connection, I equate these two approaches with that of the general idea of using FACE and EGBDF on the notation of a musical scale. I've attached a couple graphics that illustrate the general idea of note shapes. Two are from the wikipedia write up about shape notes and the other from 'Beginners guide to Shape Note Singing' by Lisa Grayson.

 

 

I suppose this mainly demonstrates that there are just as many approaches to lipsync as there will be people willing to set their minds to publishing a system for formulating it. But there does to appear to be a general approach that can account for the articulation of mouth, face and body. Is one approach better than another? I suppose it depends on the person and the work to be done. The simplest approach of course is on/off (ala the muppet's open/closed approach); it's either in one position or another with added accents from the body, environmental interaction. There are a whole lot of variations that can be produced by per-centing arbitrary measurements from an otherwise binary on/off scale.

 

 

 

 

*The original Preston Blair book on animation has been covered variously online but the important distinction is that the original book published included characters that were under copyright by other companies and so Preston Blair redrew those characters and the book was republished. I don't think Martin realized how dangerous it was to put a box full of those original books in front of me. It took all my strength to resist the urge to appropriate one.

 

**The origin of my thoughts for a four/five point system (for dialogue) actually stems from an earlier premise for full body articulation. If I understand correctly that in turn came from puppeteering where there are five primary (suspension) points used to animate a puppet (head, two arms and two legs... or neck, two hands and two feet). The book where I saw the method briefly illustrated was from a collection of art correspondence from Federal Schools Incorporated bound in a book titled, 'Illustrating and Cartooning' which I assume the recipient had personally bound into a single (incomplete) book. The Five dot action approach was presented in the lesson as a method for 'chalk talks'; used for rapid drawing in front of a live audience for the purpose of entertainment on the standard technology of the time... chalk boards.

[Rodney]

Incidentally (although off topic)...

It was while working as an instructor in Minneapolis, MN at Art Instruction Inc. that Charles Schulz worked with a fellow instructor Charlie Brown, who along with many of Schulz's acquaintances would also lend their names to the famous 'Peanuts' gang.

[John Bigboote]

Interesting! I always go back to the muppets... you got OPEN... and CLOSE, and derivitives thereof. Lipsynch can often be overthought. I had a client who was making a generic character that he would later- in post, make say anything the script called for... I asked if he simply wanted open/close mouths for simplification and he said 'no, make the character repeatedly say "Freak-off and die..." sure-enough, you could slip almost any voiceover on that character and it worked!

 

I would love to see the original Preston Blair animation books...

 

Oh, and Minneapolis is MN.. MI is Michigan.

[robcat2075]

I notice in real life we don't do a lot of mouth shaping or it tends to be rather ambiguous.

 

For example we can make an "ee" sound with almost any mouth shape besides the Preston Blair "ee"

 

I'm thinking the motion tends to be more important than the shapes.

[Rodney]

Oh, and Minneapolis is MN.. MI is Michigan.

 

Thanks. I fat fingered that typo! I'm innocent I tell ya!

You should have seen all the typos I fixed prior to posting but that the forum's spell checker grabbed and underlined in red.

 

I'm thinking the motion tends to be more important than the shapes.

 

Hmmm... yes, most definitely... and this may be why enthusiastic/exaggerated expressions in recording sessions are favored as they lend themselves to 'better' character animation.

I can't count the number of times I've read/listened to interviews with animators/directors who talked at length about the process of finding just the right voice for an animated character. Then there are the times when an artists praises the work of voice talent by stating just how much was there in the voice that allowed them to express the personality of the character.

 

This relates to Richard William's emphasis on 'progression' in dialogue and how that progression improves the delivery of dialogue.

My recollection being that he said he struggled for quite some time with a performance until he hit upon the idea of progression (specifically in that instance of moving the character forward in the available space as the dialogue was delivered).

[Rodney]

I would love to see the original Preston Blair animation books.

 

 

This isn't the content of the entire book(s) but it is a side by side comparison of the primary pages under consideration:

 

 

http://duck-walk.blogspot.com/2006/05/variations-on-theme.html

 

Attached is one of the page comparisons. Original on the left and updated character on the right.

I ran across some copies of the original artwork (scans that is) that were up for auction... now that was neat... seeing what was pasted onto the page... what was whited out. it's fun to see the actual creative process. Most of those scans are still online. It's interesting to note how much text was changed from version to version as well.

[Rodney]

In revisiting this topic...

 

I note that in the referenced image above concerning the four shapes of shape note singing there are these words:

 

"Jump in and sing 'la' if you aren't sure. You'll be right 25% of the time."

 

This underscores the reason a lot of lips can fall into sync even if ideal matches aren't always present.

This also relates to why those muppet mouths get it right often as well; namely, an open mouth will often an uttered sound convey.

 

In the four shapes of shape note singing I further surmise that more than a hint of direction is conveyed:

Fa - is conveyed with the jaw jutting downward (and possibly to the side considerably in breaking up symmetry when striving for the character in caricature)

So - the lips move outward - more horizontally than vertically (capturing and containing the echoing sound of the 'o' inside the mouth)

La - is the extension up and down (perhaps even extending to the raising of the head via the neck) to especially accommodate the movement of the tongue

Mi - is the pursing of the lips and extending them outward (mostly in vertical orientation) to capture/direct the higher note at the end.

 

Fun stuff that lip sync.

 

 

Mostly unrelated: For a little inspiration in audio syncing challenges check out the Cartoon Mixdown!