Lip Synch in After Effects

This process and production session saw us using After Effects to create a system that easily applies different mouth and eyes shapes to a character to create a quick, accurate lip synch animation.

Preparation

The preparation for this session was already done for us and we used the work for After Effects but in the future the first thing to do is to create a character in Illustrator with their eyes and mouth on separate layers.

Setting up to animate

I started by opening After Effects and importing the Illustrator file of the character. I then opened the composition with all the layers for the mouth and made each mouth shape layer a second long before making them sequence layers (they don't overlap each other). I repeated this process with the eyes composition and then put both the eyes and mouth composition under one main composition.

After this I selected the mouth and eyes compositions and enabled time remapping which leads me to create a null layer and then I applied two slider controls for that layer, one for the eyes and one for the mouth. When this was done I matched each number on the slider with a layer from the compositions so for example the 2nd layer in the mouth composition was the shape of the mouth making a "E/I" shape so I applied that layer to the number 2 in the slider. I also did this for the other slider with the eyes composition. Even though the numbers on the sliders were now linked to the layers in each composition when you move the slider it didn't change the mouth or eyes shape on the character in the main view port, so to activate the sliders I had to click on the pick whip symbol next to the time remap effect on both compositions and drag my cursor to each of the sliders. Doing this creates an expression for the time remaps that allows the sliders to change the shapes in the main view port.

Animating

The After Effect's document is now set up to animate specifically lip synching. All I did now was analyse a audio file with speech and I put in markers on where I think the shape of the mouth changes. Then in After Effects I use these markers and my notes to select a mouth shape using the slider to quickly choose the right one for each frame.
  




What Did I learn?

During this session I learnt and realised that I can set up a basic system using After Effects to animate more quickly in the future. I learnt how to use time remapping and I learnt what it is used for, using a combination of the slider and time remapping I can quickly select and use layers to animate.