Timing for Animation, 40th Anniversary Edition, 3rd Edition

Lip-Sync—1

In full animation, it is important for a character to mime. When he is speaking, therefore, his miming must be accurately synchronized to the soundtrack. Dialogue is invariably recorded before production and the timing of it is passed to the animator as a phonetic breakdown. It is also important that the animator should have a copy of the track on tape, so that he can listen to it repeatedly until the pattern of emphasis, the rise and fall of the voice, etc., is clear in his mind. It is sometimes useful to indicate this alongside the phonetic breakdown by means of a line which moves left and right as the voice falls and rises and becomes thicker and thinner according to the degree of emphasis. Usually the voice rises on important ...