Blender 2.5 Character Animation Cookbook

Talking heads (and bodies)

Lip syncing is normally a hot topic for animation students. The good news is that it's quite an easy task, if you follow some basic guidelines:

• Animate what you hear, not what you read on the transcript.
• Focus on the basic mouth shapes first; add details and polishing later.
• Asymmetry is a good thing.
• Talking isn't just about the mouth: the whole face and body has to be taken into consideration.

As with most things in animation, lip syncing gets easier once you have an organized workflow. Looking for a good reference is also important to get inspiration: notice how every person says the same word a bit differently than the others.

How to do it...

1. Open the file 010-Talk.blend. It has our character Otto with all his facial controllers, ...