Lip Syncing

So I made a start on one of the tasks for the new module. I also took some time to read through the relevant section on lip syncing and facial animation from a few of the animation books I currently have before I started just to get a general idea of what I was doing and how to tackle it.

The audio I selected is as follows:

"This is the end, the absolute end!'

Not very long, but long enough. The story I chose to betray for the piece was a father scolding his teenage son/daughter. 

I began by blocking in some basic lip sync to establish the right timing for the open and closes of the mouth shapes, as well as the wide and narrows.

I also put together a basic scene of a room with a chair, table and various items to give the impression that the man had been sitting up all night. Attempted some sort of lighting set up as well, but not too happy with that but I think I'll leave that until the actual animation is done and dusted.

I filmed some footage of myself sitting at my desk and performing to the dialogue to use as reference for my animation and then blocked in some head movements and some simple animation on the body and arms after positioning my character to be sitting at the table.

So far so good! Now to work more into the lip sync, tweak the timing and get some more expressions going... looks a bit weird at the moment cos his eyes are unfocused, there's no eye brow movement and his face is just blank, haha!