Maya Tips 01-Anime Mouths and how it can be used for your own CGI Lipsyncs

If there's one thing that ANIME does better than it's western counterpart does, that would have to be keeping everything hand-drawn, frame-by-frame.

None of that Puppet-Rigged Bullshit is allowed in anime. With the exception of 3DCG Environments, Everything has to be drawn frame-by-frame by hand (Really a Wacom Cintiq Stylus.)

Of course, I've stated that anime does cut some corners such as make the key-frames more choppier but then again, the choppier the keyframes, the better you handle the acting.

One shortcut that anime uses is whenever the characters talk, the mouths just open and close with barely and vowel animation applied to it unless the production calls for it.

This is a recreation of Misato's "THAT'S A LOAD OF BULL" mouth animation from Evangelion but it still fits the topic on ANIME MOUTH FLAPS.

Why do anime studios do this when animating mouths?

Well it's a holdover from the days of Osamu Tezuka's dominance in the animation scene in Japan. He influenced many an animator in the Japanese animation industry to cut down on the cost of television animation.

But another reason for the mouth flaps just being up and down motions is because the Japanese know their work is going to be dubbed in multiple languages so if the mouth flaps are just the simple up and down motions, then the dialogue will be seamless since the vowels won't dictate what the character should be saying unlike what happens when you take a Disney Movie and dub it into another language.

Of course, sometimes the ADR Studio doesn't get the message and still does what it does.

Remember when Dragon Ball Z was dubbed in English by the Vancouver Studio OCEAN STUDIOS?

Well remember when Brian Drummond said "IT'S OVER 9000!!!"

According to this Dragon Ball Wiki Article:

https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/It's_Over_9000!?so=search

The ADR studio still believed in Vowel matching despite how simplistic the animation of Vegeta's Mouth flaps were but then again, it brought in the famous Meme decades later.

But that does this have to do with CGI?

Well it's a starting technique I use for when I do lip sync animation in MAYA.

I start with setting a virtual camera in MAYA, 

then I position that camera to the face of my rig. I then constrain the camera to the head control of that character rig. 

That's done by selecting the Character's head control

Then selecting the Camera that will go with that character. I actually create multiple cameras so I don't forgo the main one which is for the final renders.

Then I select the constrain tool. The head control of the rig has to be selected first and then the camera.

And that's how I constrain a Camera to the face.

I then select the jaw control that controls the jaw of the character because in real-life, The Jaw (Or mandible) is the dominant player in opening and closing of the mouth.

The jaw animation is dictated by the audio that's used by the scene which I'm working on. I actually have to scrub within the timeline of the project so I can accurately hear what the voice is saying and try to set the keyframe of where the jaw pose goes to.

How do I set a keyframe in MAYA? And that's accomplished by pressing "S" on my keyboard.

Unlike most animators, I don't use keyboards that use rubber domes or scissor switches. 

I'm fiercely a pro-mechanical keyboard type of guy so I need to be accurate to 

what Keyboard I'm using which Currently I'm using is an

EPOMAKER Dynatab75 Retro Red Tactile Switch keyboard.

If you're using a different keyboard, refer to your own board for reference instead of mine unless you have the same model as I do which would be nice.

Back to topic. This is the graph editor in Maya. This is where your keyframes for each control is going to be. It's also where you can edit where the tangents will be.

You can still refer to this graph even if you're using a different program like Blender.

Also, Unlike most animators who might just work on one screen by setting their workspace to animation in MAYA, I actually use my Wacom One Pen Display as my workspace for Maya's Graph Editor since I use a 1080p Monitor so I need all that workspace on my main Monitor so working with the graph editor on a secondary monitor really helps matters.

This is just part 01 of my new series of Posts called MAYA TIPS. I want to provide some knowledge I got from both Lasalle and Self-Teaching myself so I can pass on my knowledge to future animators.

The next part will be about Vowels in mouth animation.

I thought instead of doing a post about me voicing my bias on modern animation, I decided to pass on my animation knowledge to newer animators.

Who knows, Maybe I'll create another blog dedicated to Animation Curriculum.