This exercise involved filming a classmate introducing themselves, and then creating a lip sync animation based on their body acting. I decided to animate Aron as a Tarsier, an animal native to the Philippines. I also think it’s funny to animate an animal which normally loves tropical fruits saying he hates papayas.

Recording the sound in the studio was really fun, and the sound quality is leagues above the original.

This was really challenging, as the exercise involved, acting, character design and animal anatomy. I could easily watch how my or Aron’s mouth moved, but obviously a marsupial will have different mouth anatomy.

Tarsiers have rather creepy looking mouths which open in an odd triangle shape- not great for oos or ee sounds. The jaw hinges down, and pretty much all the muscles follow. What other animal has this anatomical problem but is animated all the time? The cat.

I decided to find some Disney cat character sheets to reference the mouth shapes. Not only are they helpful in their anatomy bending, they’re also cute. The bottom ‘jaw’ as it were becomes less prominent at certain angles and mouth shapes, probably for just aesthetics. You can see Marie down below has a very malleable mouth.

However, actual lip sync sheets were hard to find so I found myself drawing my own face anyway.