How to Make Animated Films
172
Timing and the subtlety of mouth movement should complete the action in a plausible and convincing way.
This is something not easily communicated with the written word, however. It
is much more a process of trial and error until you get it the way you want it to
work most e ectively.
Facial Animation
Now that you have created the correct body language of the piece through
your correct drawing and timing of the key poses, you need to concentrate on
the facial expressions of the character to better de ne the mood or emotion
of the piece.
Dialog
173

The pose and facial expression says
everything!
First, to loosen you up a bit, I would suggest that you put aside the dialog
sequence for now and work on a quick new assignment — a bite and chew
test.
Bite and Chew
Draw a medium close-up of your character, holding a candy bar in his or her
hand.

The start point of the bite and chew
exercise. (Source: DigiPen student art
by Laura Franke.)
How to Make Animated Films
174
Now animate the character bringing the candy bar to his or her mouth, biting
o a piece of it and broadly and enthusiastically chewing it. Finally, have the
character swallow the chewed piece.

Dialog
175
Working with the Face
Clearly, the main reason for producing the bite and chew animation is to give you
a sense of how much the face distorts and how extended positioning of the jaw
can a ect the features of the face. This is an extreme of most dialog positioning,
of course, but it is an invaluable way for you to experience the speed, positioning,
and timing involved in producing a major piece of facial animation.
Anyway, with the bite and chew successfully created, you are now ready to
return to the dialog challenge.
Study Real Facial Emotion
Watch a great actor on the screen deliver a line of powerful dialog and you will
see a vast range of emotion communicated in quite small and subtle ways.
Consider the look in the eyes, the nature and timing of a blink, a hint and
duration of a smile (or scorn), and the general presence of happiness, sadness,
anger, and humiliation in the expression. All these things communicate the
mood or emotion underpinning the words that are being spoken.
This is the heart of being a great dialog animator and why it is not just the mouth
opening and closing in perfect sync with the soundtrack. It is also what makes
the challenge of working with spoken dialog so exciting for the serious animator.
Returning to the audio track, play it over and over again and listen to the
subtle in ections contained in the words. You have painted the important key
poses with your broadest brush so far, but now you have to work  ner and
 ner to emphasize the more subtle qualities of what is being spoken. Listen
behind the actual words for the shades and tones of emotion.

The subtlety of this 3D-created talking
Dale Chihuly action for the  lm Fire
Gods reveals a surprising amount
of subtlety of expression. (Source:


This dark and disturbing ghost from
my  lm, Endangered Species , reveals
the power of animated imagery
outside of the more conventional
cartoon genre.
Dialog
177
The Process of Facial Expression
Technically, you should approach facial expression just as you approached the
body language poses. Take from your mind the existence of the keys you have
already selected for the key positions of the body. Here you are identifying
expression keys that will have timings and numberings entirely of their own.
The facial action will be connected to the pose key numbering in some way, of
course, but quite often the face will express itself independently of what the
body is doing. This should, therefore, be re ected in the facial animation and
key numbering selection.
As before, I always start by writing my action intentions in the left column, beside the audio breakdown
column, and write in the two’s animation numbers, ready for the key positions to be marked.
So, listen to the audio track over and over again, as you did before with the
body pose selection, and indicate on the exposure sheet where you feel
the facial keys for the key expressions might lie. You can circle them with a
di erent color pencil if it helps.
How to Make Animated Films
178
I can only repeat again that these should be entirely di erent frame numbers
than the key body positions. So, be brave and astute in your selections,
although it might be that you’re happy to use the existing body keys
regardless.


generic of mouth shapes.
Much thinking has to now go toward the shape of the mouth, the size of the
mouth’s opening, and its overall relationship to the expression and shape
maintained by the face at any moment in time. Consequently, consider these
things very carefully as you draw the mouth positions.
Following are a few golden rules you should be aware of when attempting the
lip sync interpretation.
Vowel Sounds
Vowel sounds are the peg on which all other dialog lip synching hangs. If
you successfully hit all the vowel sounds on sync, then whatever you do for
the consonants will pretty much work  ne. Vowel sounds — a, e, i, o, and u
How to Make Animated Films
180
sounds — are the ones that have to have open-mouthed positions of some
kind to emphasize them precisely.
The outer, open-mouth positions will be the most powerful tool animators have in emphasizing the major
impact points of any dialog.
The  gure shows just generic shapes, of course, to give you an idea of the
broad di erences between them. However, the  nal (and more correct) shape
of the open mouth on the vowel sounds will vary from sound to sound,
emotion to emotion, mood to mood, and delivery to delivery, all totally
dependent on the nature of the words being expressed. Mouth shapes will
also be very dependent on the anatomical nature of the character design you
are working with!

Two contrasting mouth shapes that
communicate two entirely di erent
emotions.
T I P
Animators of dialog cannot work without a mirror to guide them.

anything from 8 to 14 frames. Then again, you will have to arrive at your own
perfect anticipation formula by trying and seeing what works best for you.
Tongue Action
Don’t forget the valuable addition that selective tongue animation can o er
to the dialog. Watch yourself in the mirror and see what your tongue does,
especially when there is an L in the words being spoken.
Just  ap the tongue up into the roof of the mouth from a previous down position to communicate the L sound
whenever it is required.
But be wary of  apping the tongue around too much in your animation. It
can be very distracting if you do that because by the time you get to the all-
important L points in the track, the emphasis will be lost. Consequently, use
the tongue sparingly, but use it well wherever necessary.
Teeth and Bones
Many characters have teeth. Some do not. If your character has teeth, remember
that teeth on the whole are like the skull — they are made of solid, in exible bone
and therefore don’t animate as much as the rest of the  eshier parts of the face
will. That is okay for the Max Fleischer or Tex Avery school of animation style,
but rarely advisable today. (Unless you are spoo ng the style of these old-time
greats, that is!)
Dialog
183
Quite often animators move the teeth as if they are as  uid and  exible as the lips.
But this is not so. The lips, cheeks, and jaw move around the teeth, which in most
cases are rigid and attached to the skull. So, utilize this fact when you animate.
That said, unless your character has de nite buck teeth, don’t emphasize the
teeth too much either. They are set in the mouth, yes, but they should not
protrude or have too much undue emphasis. It will be distracting. Keep them
natural looking and let the lips and other parts of the face work around them
wherever necessary, as happens in real life.
The Practical Approach to Lip Synching

Pro, actually enables you to test the lip-sync timing before even drawing it!
The secret to being a great animator is practice, practice, practice. The more
you try (and maybe even fail) the more you will begin to learn the subtleties
that work for you and separate you from the herd. Dialog is a very subtle art in
many ways and so it does take a lot of e ort to pull it o if you’re not naturally
inclined to it in the  rst place. But try, and keep trying. We all do get there in
the end, no matter how long it may take!
Two-Character Dialog
Not much is ever written about two-character (or more) dialog. So we will
brie y touch on it. Just as with single-character dialog, two-character dialog
is not just opposing characters looking at each other and opening or closing
Dialog
185
their mouths in relation to what is being said. Usually a dialog between two
people involves a degree of emotion of some kind — indeed, probably more so
than with single-character dialog.
Two characters can be happy together, unhappy together, angry at one
another, consoling each other, or just one telling the other a joke. But
whatever is occurring between them, what needs to be communicated is
much more than the actual words being said. So pay great attention to their
body language and to the expressions they share one to another.

Timing of delivery can make even the
most minimal of TV-style animation
work in the right circumstances! Always look to the composition you
choose to highlight the kind of mood
you are looking for with the scene

the audio and create body language poses to underpin them. Pose test these
and view in sync with the soundtrack.

Again staging, composition, and body
language say so much!
Next, work on the facial expressions to and from each character. Then once
again test the action with the soundtrack.

A pose without the mouth can express
so much to the audience.
How to Make Animated Films
188
Finally, add the lip sync to both, even if the passive character is listening.
Subtle changes in the passive character’s mouth shape can communicate so
much on what he or she is “ saying ” to the active character, even though words
may never pass from his or her lips!

Even a passively positioned mouth says
so much, even though the character
isn’t actually speaking.
Again: Test, correct, test, correct, etc. until everything is working well, as you
would want it.
Staging
Staging is the  lmic process of setting the scene and framing the shots to get
the maximum impact or communication from the action. If you have two
people speaking, you want to identify all of what we have just discussed in
this chapter, plus the way you want the audience to best see what is going
on. Consequently, before you do anything, you might want to create a simple
thumbnail storyboard of how you intend to stage the dialog sequence. This
can better de ne how you approach your animation and how much you put

can immediately see who is the aggressor and who is the recipient of the
aggression.

Again, note how the body language
and scene staging tells the story…
even without words!
Dialog
191
Next we might want to focus in more on the aggressor, see him close up and
hear speci cally what he is saying. Clearly his expressions will carry a great
deal of the weight here, so this is an opportunity for the animator to place a
great deal of detailed facial and lip-sync work into the action. The recipient
is not even in this shot, so we don’t see him at all (which saves a great deal of
work for the 2D animator at least).

A close-up, well-composed image can
appear very powerful in the context of
the scene storyline.
Next, we might actually want to share with the audience the mood and
reaction of the recipient. So we can cut to him while the aggressor is still
speaking. Clearly, he is looking intimidated and even a little nervous. This
tells the audience a great deal, although this character is hardly moving, and
certainly not talking.

Even passive poses can suggest so
much!
How to Make Animated Films
192
Lastly, we might return to our wide two-shot to reveal the conclusion of the
scene, which in this case we have to actually handle in two storyboard shots.

is always a caricature of real life, and therefore animators have to keep their
eyes open to the realities of what is all around them, whether on stage, on the
screen, in their own living rooms, or in the streets they journey down every day.
Suggested Reading
W h i t e , T . The Animator’s Workbook . New York : Watson-Guptill , 1988 ,
pp. 130 – 141.
W h i t e , T . Animation from Pencils to Pixels: Classical Techniques for Digital
Animators . Boston : Focal Press , 2006 , pp. 249 – 256, 455 – 457 and 404 – 405.
DVD lecture: “DEMO — Lip Sync”.
Assignment 9
With a portable audio machine, go out into the community and record any
two-character dialog interaction that is taking place. (Note that Aardman’s
Creature Comforts  lms are a perfect example of what this approach can o er
the imaginative animator!) Select a suitable section of this recorded dialog (I
would advise it lasting no longer than 30 seconds if possible), and animate
two characters of your own design speaking the dialog to one another. Make
sure you emphasize the dynamics, emotions, and expressions between
them, as well as making the lips move in perfect synchronization with the
soundtrack, of course!

This page intentionally left blank
195
Class objective: To take everything learned so far and demonstrate your
competence to bring it all together in one coherent and well-thought-out
sequence.
Equipment required: Lightbox, pencil, and paper.
W
ell here we are, almost at the end of the road for the 10-stage
foundation course on animation techniques. By now you should be
a reasonably competent rookie animator, armed with enough principles of

For example, a character plucks a string. To animate a staggered vibration of
the taut string you essentially need three key positions. The  rst frame we
I bet your pencil can hardly remain
still with the excitement… time for a
“stagger”!