I mentioned on twitter that I wanted to do a lip sync tutorial and immediately got some people who were interested so I put one together real quick!
I’m going to use a bit of unfinished lip sync from my taz animated part as reference. They’re just gifs so no sound, but you should still be able to tell that he’s saying “I’d say a solid B… Solid B minus.”
Anyone who’s looked up how to do lip sync has seen phoneme charts. Phonemes are just the shape your mouth makes when you make certain sounds.
What’s easiest is to say it yourself and pay attention to the shapes your mouth is making. Since you’re going frame by frame, your audio is slow enough that you can make each shape slowly and distinctly and you can get each individual phoneme down in the animation.
An easy way to tell if you’re animating lip sync wrong is if you run out of frames to make each shape. You don’t need them! Making each shape is unnatural. People talk quickly and the mouth doesn’t have the time to get into each shape. They blend together, sometimes to the point where the shape doesn’t change at all!
Not only does the 2nd gif take less frames and energy to make, it’s more relaxed, it looks less distracting, and his lips are much easier to read!
These are reference charts to show the differences more clearly
This is the difference between getting swallowed up in every last detail and paying attention to reality.
What matters more than hitting every syllable is making it look natural and flow with the acting. That’s why anime mouth flaps can work so well. A strong pose through the whole body matters more than one mouth shape.
get some nice black and white line art without a scanner or computer just on your (i)phone! this is how i upload all my comix hope this is helpful
i dont really need a whole tutorial but i was wondering if you had any coloring tips?
uhm uhm i guess the main thing for me personally is for shading, don’t use a colour that’s just darker than your base colours e.g if you have yellow, don’t use a darker version of that same yellow. use an orange or pink
using a darker version of base colours is boring imo. play around with colours until you find something you like. mix colours together. its fun
i hhope that helped
I'm kinda ashamed to ask this, but could you make a tutorial on how to draw hands? ;A;
omg dont be ashamed at all!! Hands are generally tough to get used to, lots of artists struggle with it! so dont be ashamed i feel you.
and I actually have made a hand anatomy guide before in fact! If you want to get better at drawing hands I def recommend you learn the basic anatomy first. Please check out the ones I made, I try to make it simple and easy to understand:
Artistic Anatomy: Hands Part 1
Artistic Anatomy: Hands Part 2
There’s my guide to the anatomy, but here’s some more tips that I’ve noted to myself that I’d like to include
First off, I’d like to just note on the fingers: if you pay close attention to your own hand, you may notice the fingers are ever ever so slightly curved inward. It’s a very subtle detail, but I noticed that, despite how slight it is, it can make a hand look more lively, and less stiff.
Second, the “M” on the palm! Your hand moves in many ways, and because it does it creates creases in your hand. The most prominent creases appear to make an M shape; this is handy to remember for what I’m going to talk about next. (It also could be a “W” I guess, or to be more specific a “ )X( “; just think of it in whatever way helps you remember!)
SO now that you see the M, draw your hand as a basic blocked shape and add your details. As you do, you can see that the M divides the palm into four basic parts!
When the hand moves, parts A, B, or C of the palm, alone or in different combos, will create the general poses that the hands do normally. These parts are the parts that move, with D being stationary, no matter what!
Here’s a chart of all the possible combos. Once you have down what part of the hand moves for a certain pose, you can change up the fingers and tweak it a bit to do what you need to make it more specific!
This is simply my method of drawing hands. God knows there are hundreds of tutorials out there by other artists, but personally, this way helps me the best (after learning the anatomy first).
This way I can divide the hand and combine the parts in any such way I need!
Hands take a lot of effort to grapple, and you need to practice them a lot, especially foreshortening of the hand; that’s really something you need to learn through your own studies. Look at your own hands, draw hands from life, from magazines, shows, comics; just draw hands! You’ll eventually figure out a method that works best for you. So to get better at drawing hands; draw hands!! And don’t stress over it, have fun with it!
Please keep in mind that I’m not a professional or anything!
I just took some art classes when I was younger, so these are just a few things I remember or have learned since then!
Anyways, this ‘tutorial’ is just something I made very quickly…and I’m not good at explaining or teaching.
So please don’t take this seriously lol
Mischief - The Sketching/Art software that acts like a regular raster-based painting software, but with infinite vector scaling! [x]
Hey Ross, I'm currently 15, a Junior in high school, and love to animate. I don't think going to an art institute/university is the right move though when I get out of HS - financially or for many other reasons. Community College is a huge possibility though, as it's less expensive and would still teach me more things about animation all together. For the most part, I believe animation can be a self-taught experience, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
That’s great dude. Don’t feel like you HAVE to go get an education in animation to succeed. I tried it, but it wasn’t for me. I found I wasn’t really learning enough compared to what I learnt just fiddling and making mistakes by myself. I mean look at Arin, he didn’t even finish high school yet he taught himself to be an animator. Some people learn better being pushed by an education system, some are better left to figure things out for themselves. If think you’re better going it alone then GREAT! You’re an autodidact!
Here’s some stuff I’d recommend you focus on while getting started:
Learn Flash or Toon Boom.
Maya/3DS Max/Zbrush if you’re interested in 3D (I have a minor background with it)
Study life drawing and human anatomy. Try this if you’re at a loss for material: http://www.posemaniacs.com/
Keep an organized folder of art reference (find it by following art tutorial blogs or your favorite artists). I have gigabytes of reference in my folders.
Get your head around cinematography. Watch legendary films and figure out what makes the shots great. One exercise is to take your favorite shots and make silhouette thumbnails of how things are placed, helps you break it down in your head.
Composition! It’s crazy and even those who get it sometimes don’t get it.. but just look it up online to get your head around it. It’s all about placement and arrangement of shit.
MAKE FRIENDS! Talk to other artists like yourself who are starting out. I met Arin online through Newgrounds when I was 16/17 and we’ve been friends ever since. It’s important to have like minded friends!
Keep a sketchbook, draw all the time. If you prefer doing it digitally then that’s fine, but keeping a sketchbook is a magical thing. Also helps with your line confidence, at least I think so.
If you want to develop your own stories to go along with your animations, consider the following books: Screenwriting 101 (I LOVE this book, really great read AND it’s written by someone pretending to be The Hulk), On Writing: A memoir of the Craft (Stephen King! Haven’t read this one yet but friends recommend it) and also Save the Cat! (this one is more so about selling scripts and writing to a formula, don’t take it as gospel.. But it’s interesting).
Voice act! Shit man, just get a decent microphone when you can. Make goofy voices, do imitations. Get silly! Lots of animators have at least some experience doing voice acting!
WATCH STUFF. Seriously, I can not stress this enough. Everything is derivative from other works and that’s okay. Inspiration comes from everywhere and anything. My late friend Monty also preached this, he even proudly told me some of his early influence for RWBY such as Black Rock Shooter. Finding influence breeds passion. You’re not slacking off watching cartoons, you’re researching.
ANIMATE! Do it however you can! Stop motion lego, flipping paper.. I don’t care. Just do it. Whatever you learn, It all translates across any version of the medium.
ANIMATORS SURVIVAL KIT. This book is a must and most animation schools highly recommend it. It was written by Richard Williams the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (among other things). If you’re not big on reading, then you’re in luck because it’s MOSTLY pretty pictures. http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284
Lastly but not least.. Just don’t stop. The people you see online and on TV right now, they’re not kicking ass because of some god given talent. They’re there because they didn’t stop. They persevered through it all and kept going, no matter what anyone else told them.
Good luck!
NSFW because there will probably be nude refs | this is a side blog to sort all of the art stuff I need | none of it is mine
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