Overview and Basic Blocking - Facial Animation & Lip Sync (part 1)

Time to start with a Lip Sync and Facial Animation series! So get ready for tips, demos, pitfalls and overall dos and don'ts! There's a lot to cover, so buckle up!
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[@jeandenishaas]

This is going to be a monster series! So much to cover! Much requested and open to topic suggestions here in the comments! Let's make this the One Series To Rule Them All!!

[@carlosmejia7801]

Really excited about this!

[@jeandenishaas]

Carlos Mejia Me too!

[@dariamerkulova6175]

Thank you! The tip with the fist is awesome.

[@jeandenishaas]

👍🏻😁

[@ebenhzr7712]

Can i see your workshop about making facial animation ohh yeaaa i really Waitng about part 2

[@jeandenishaas]

Eben hzr Comiiiiiing! 😁 So much I want to do!

[@JustZino]

looking forward for part 2

[@jeandenishaas]

JustZino Me too! Lots of parts in this series!

[@RDDsnipez]

i was looking the whole of yesterday for some good Facial animation tips and was so happy when this showed up in my sub box

[@jeandenishaas]

RDDsnipez Perfect timing!

[@ayoaye2276]

that jaw tip is amazing!

[@jeandenishaas]

Happy to read that!

[@chrisdreliszak9273]

Thank you for this! Looking forward to the rest of this series! :)

[@jeandenishaas]

Chris Dreliszak You’re welcome!

[@brandonberrycg8758]

Awww yeah! I've been waiting for this series to kick off! I've already learned a few things on the first video! Going to try that fist to jaw technique on my next lip sync for sure. Thanks Jean-Denis, for doing all of this!

[@jeandenishaas]

Brandon Berry CG You’re welcome! More to come!

[@dondrapichrust]

Yes ! I've been waiting for this topic to come, because I've already dig the whole internet and there is no good tutorials in this matter O.o any way looking forward for this series!

[@jeandenishaas]

Kuba J. I hope the series will help you!

[@dondrapichrust]

@@jeandenishaas Hey JD, any chance for new video in this series in nearest future? crossing fingers :)

[@jeandenishaas]

Kuba J. Yep! This week! 😁

[@iiAnferny]

Thank you for this. Currently working on a dialogue shot for my demo reel before CTN

[@jeandenishaas]

iiAnferny That’s a tight deadline!!

[@sujoypatranabish7336]

Your videos came into KZbin suggestion as a blessing, have a 25 second dialogue shot to make in a about a weeks' time. Watching your videos to distract myself from the huge blunder of a workflow I followed. Great videos by the way, looking forward for the series.

[@jeandenishaas]

Sujoy Patranabish Thanks!!

[@bula288]

I'm sure part 2 will drop any minute now 😁

[@jeandenishaas]

Hahah it will!!

[@Aaron_miraz]

Thanks Jean, I really appreciate this type of content.

[@jeandenishaas]

Aarón SW You’re very welcome!

[@Brocknoviatch]

Looking super forward to this series! Can’t wait to see the blocking that you described in the video. I think it would be a great idea to link to some free rigs so people can follow along in the series. Also would be helpful to know how you go about choosing audio to animate dialogue too. Thank you for sharing this with us!

[@jeandenishaas]

Good suggestions! Have you seen my Animation Buffet clips regarding rigs? I have a clip about Audio selection and I’ll mention it in this series and will probably to a new clip about it as part of this series. Thanks!!

[@Brocknoviatch]

New to your channel, I will be sure to check out those videos!

[@raremilindchitale]

Thank you. You make things easier to understand with clarity. Tried to watch a few other videos previously on this topic and got a little confused.

[@jeandenishaas]

Milind Chitale Happy to help! Glad it’s clear!

[@enderperez-lopezanimations4103]

I bet this series will be a great one, Hey Jean-Denis can you in future series talk about "copied pairs", because right now I am trying to explore that workflow. Well, thank you for share all of these useful series.

[@jeandenishaas]

I have to admit ignorance, what are "copied pairs"?

[@enderperez-lopezanimations4103]

@@jeandenishaas I don't know too much of the subject, but as far as I know is workflow that let you avoid loose your timming when you switch from stepped mode to Auto (Spline). In the AM campus site, on resources there is two video Q&A about that. I will send you a Private e-mail in the campus site with the link. Thank you Jean-Denis.

[@jeandenishaas]

Ender Perez Sweet! I’ll check it out!

[@jovontowns591]

This is interesting to me... I'm a newcomer to animation trying for self teaching. Even though I don't understand the language, I prefer watching Anime in subtitles because I need the sounds to match the emotion of the characters performance. The Dubbed just doesn't give the anime the same feeling. But the dubbed still has a huge following, so I'm guessing that for them, syncing the mouth isn't important just as long as the emotions are illustrated artfully.

[@jeandenishaas]

Jovon BlackPixel Yeah, I’m in the same camp, I like to hear the original voice. But I did grow up in Switzerland and used to dubbed movies and tv shows because of that. 😄

[@harshal792]

Really helpful tips! Are there more videos in the series?

[@jeandenishaas]

Harshal Ashar Thanks! And yes, after many delays, I will continue next week and alternate with the camera lectures, and sprinkle some other lectures in there every now and then. 😁

[@mail2santak]

Waiting for the upcomming parts pls make it soon if possible... :D so much to learn

[@jeandenishaas]

Santak Podh Coming in January!

[@LalitSharma-sj5bk]

It's been 7 months , really waiting for part 2.

[@jeandenishaas]

Lalit Sharma Hahaha me too! Got distracted my other series and then work. My classes are ending this week and I should have more time now during the Summer. I will continue very soon! Thanks for being patient!

[@learning3d742]

@@jeandenishaas Hey JD, this has the potential for an EPIC series. Did you progress the facial animation one? Can't seem to find part 2 :)

[@jeandenishaas]

@@learning3d742 It will continue probably next week or right after that. I’ve said it before and then got busy with other things but I can fold it into my own work now so the facial and camera series will continue very soon.

[@aminhooshmand2283]

Hi, Mr. Jean-Denis Haas, It was a great video but I'm looking for the other parts. I couldn't find

[@jeandenishaas]

Thanks! I know it’s been a while but I will continue very soon!

[@aminhooshmand2283]

@@jeandenishaas Great!

[@pkminpkmon]

I'm trying to move from a laptop to buying a PC, partially because I also want more storage space in one space, so I can avoid always loading up external hard drives ^^' Do you have any recommendations as a professional animator? The amount of choice in specs is overwhelming me

[@jeandenishaas]

pkmaniac Do I ever! I’m going to release a recommendations clip next week about Puget Systems, thanks to Sir Wade!

[@pkminpkmon]

@@jeandenishaas Wooo, can't wait!! Thanks!

[@jeandenishaas]

pkmaniac Sure thing! Coming out Tuesday or Wednesday!

[@JCPunkHead]

Yes this is a much needed topic to be covered, thanks for this! I'm just wondering, when blocking these out, do you keep things in stepped? And all the keys on the same frame too? So that it remains as clean as possible? At which point usually do you start splining stuff? My concern is always: when face are keyed on different frames as the body, you start to have these jitters where things are moving at different times, and that just throws me off. But I also love working in stepped too! Please help!

[@jeandenishaas]

JCPunkHead I do key on the same frame to keep things clean at the beginning. But I don’t do stepped. Mainly because of work and I’m used to linear/spline right off the bat.

[@Ohem1]

Late comment but still have to ask: How do you, in lack of better term and sentence, balance between quality and workflow efficiency? Say a company wants you to do manual keyframing and use a specific commercial tool, not only would that require learning but also time doing the animation. Then we have facial capture, whether it's tracked from a video of a person's face or infrared live data, you would have a results pretty fast but also end up with excess data, and so optimizing would require time and additional adjustments to avoid say clipping, it can be done without much expense on the software side - but time? Then we have software that creates animation data based on voice recordings (Mass Effect Andromeda, Borderlands 3, Vampyr, Elder Scrolls etc), Saves time but quality suffers. Where is the line drawn? I understand it's very circumstantial, but what's your perspective on this?

[@jeandenishaas]

Not sure I have an answer to that. There will always be pros and cons to specific software. Time and budget are also a factor determining many things. I just try to do the best I can with whatever tools I have.

[@Ohem1]

@@jeandenishaas Alright, I'll try to rephrase. Given your knowledge, what's the most work you've done that'd require a specific methodology as opposed to the more practical?

[@jeandenishaas]

@@Ohem1 Depends on what you define as practical. Dealing with Mocap data requires a specific workflow and methodology. The tools we use that help us with vehicle animation might be very methodical in terms of setup. To me they’re great and are now the practical way to me. 😁

[@jagotato]

So nice!!! Thank you sensei for sharing your knowledge!! I have a question: How arcs work in the head and in the mouth?? I developed a trick, I always track my character´s nose and make arcs with the head control, but I don´t know if that´s correct.

[@jeandenishaas]

Tracking the nose is always good but sometimes it's also about the spacing of a shape and how it plays out towards your camera movement. Mouth wise you want to track the arcs of the mouth corners. And be careful about your jaw too in terms of spacing and arcs. I'll elaborate on that in my Lip Sync series.

[@gauravpratapsingh398]

Hello Jean, you are a superb teacher and I am learning so much from your channel. I am curious about lip syncing and animating shots where the dialogue delivery is superfast like that of Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock. I mean wouldn't that be too much of a work keyframe-wise?

[@jeandenishaas]

Gaurav Pratap Singh Chauhan You’re very kind! Thank you! And yes, that’s a problem and tricky to do. You’ll have to simplify things, think in terms of sounds and not each word or letter, etc.

[@mikeaveloful]

as animation director, in a preproduction stage, what would be your advice to develop good character turns

[@jeandenishaas]

I haven’t been an animation director so unfortunately I can’t really tell you. On top of that, what exactly do you mean by “character turns”?

[@mikeaveloful]

​@@jeandenishaas according to your experience for a cut-out project, in what percentage the animation department is involved in the character design

[@jeandenishaas]

Mike Castillo Hahaha you stump me again. I don’t do cut out designs either. But hopefully animators are involved with the designers so that range of motion and movement complexity and freedom is being considered. You don’t want to design a character which limits the range of movement and then ask for crazy movements during the animation phase.

[@mikeaveloful]

@@jeandenishaas Thanks Jean. you're right. Unfortunately, until today I have not been able to obtain information about it, and the only thing that remains is to keep track of those points that you mention.

[@jeandenishaas]

Mike Castillo Sorry that I wasn’t of more help!

[@lucaskiiid]

love u

[@jeandenishaas]

CCC lucas ☺️

[@colorskidsgames2455]

muy buenos consejos, espero la animación de labios ya que eso me falta jijijiji quiero para animar a pacman ya que no consigo domar a pacman todavia :)

[@jeandenishaas]

Colors Kids Games Sorry, I don’t understand!!

[@colorskidsgames2455]

@@jeandenishaas No te preocupes ;) espero mas videos con mas consejos :)

[@jeandenishaas]

Colors Kids Games More videos with more tips are coming :)

[@jagotato]

​@@jeandenishaas Basically he said, he's hoping the tutorial in deep for the lip sync because he is still no very good at it.

[@jagotato]

Colors Kids Games ¿domar pacman?, yo no me enfocaría en domar un rig, me enfocaría en domar la animación en si y todas las técnicas y teorías que encuentres sobre animación.