What can South Park teach us about Puppet Rigged Mouths?

As much as I'll voice my viewpoints over how Puppet Rigs have overtaken the Western Animation industry, there's one thing I'll agree with that I can take and that's the MOUTHS.....

Not designs. I'm not a fan of Stealing Simpsons Teeth and using ovals for mouths but rather the efficiency in how the mouth assets are made in Toon Boom Harmony.

And I owe it all to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for doing this with SOUTH PARK

Because of the Cut Out nature of SOUTH PARK, the mouths had to be pre-made so You're essentially limited to these mouth shapes.

Originally, they were literally just cutouts of mouth shapes to apply on the characters but South Park uses Autodesk Maya for it's animation so the mouths are created in CorelDraw and then exported and then imported into MAYA.

Knowing all of this, I wondered how it is with 2D rigs in Toon Boom?

Well after getting my feet dipped into all of this back in College and after college, I figured that it's all having to do with how the rig was built from the ground-up.

There are several rigs out there but not a lot are built with South Park logic for the mouthes.

For me, I'm better off with rigs who's mouths are built using South Park Logic, at least for presets in the mouth construction.

There are some RIGS out there who's mouths use MAYA RIG logic for their mouths but I find that not efficient enough for my tastes. In 2D, it's better off to stick with a Preset for mouthes

Unless you're DOUG FUNNIE in which even with the change of Parent Companies, Overseas Studios, and Animation Techniques, he'll still refuse Puppet Rigs.

If both the Nickelodeon and Disney Series Intros were re-animated, Doug would be holding a WACOM Cintiq stylus instead of an actual pencil........

The more I look at both intros, the more the DOUG intros have in common with Chuck Jones' DUCK AMUCK....

You know.... where the animator screws around the their characters.....

"Hey!!! I'm not Charles Martin Jones' cosmic plaything!!!

The difference between both DOUG intros and Duck Amuck is that DOUG is not screwed around by a disembodied hand holding a pencil, unlike with Daffy Duck where he's been screwed around by a disembodied rabbit hand holding a paint brush...

Rabbits? OOPS. SPOILER ALERT.

I plan to do some Toon Boom Harmony Tips posts in the future using a Rig based on Luz Noceda from THE OWL HOUSE.

Kudos to COLM DOWLING for constructing this rig.

 If you want, here's the link to the rig:

https://colmartwork.gumroad.com/l/luzrig?layout=profile

And yes, my Toon Boom Harmony Tips will be for puppet rigs only. 

If I were talking about hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation, they'd have their own Curriculum category despite using Toon Boom as well.