Animation: Lip Sync

Students will create an animated puppet head with replaceable mouths. Students will animate the puppet speaking, singing, or otherwise using movement to create a believable motion for their character.

This unit has four parts: research and design (designing the puppet, choosing/creating sound), prototype (creating a volume out of paper), final project design in fabric, and documentation of the finished work (photos, email, reflection, and critique).

Overview Unit Goal

Composition Concepts

  • Character Mouth Shapes
  • Character Personality
  • Animation Principles

Technical Skills

  • Building a Puppet: Creating armature, Sculpting modeling clay, sculpting replacement parts
  • Animating: timing to give the character believability, small movements to create believable motion, using onion skinning to create fluid movements

Tools & Supplies

  • Drill Press
  • E6000 Adhesive
  • Pliers
  • BBQ Skewer/Popsicle stick/Foil/Plastic Bag
  • Low Heat Oven
  • iPad tripod arm

Inspiration Videos

Technical Skill Videos

More Interesting Videos

Resource Book Page

Order of Work

Determine Your Design
  • Draw 2 Views - front, side (to scale with each other and the actual puppet - use the two blocks to help create the right size)
  • Create or find sound (10 - 30 seconds)
Constructing the Puppet
  • Drill holes in the head and torso blocks
  • Optional: cut torso block into more appealing shape
  • Twist wire into a neck and glue the two blocks to the neck
  • Optional: movable arms: drill holes for arms, twist wire, glue into arm sockets
  • Optional: add foil to the head block to best approximate the form you want to make
  • Add bake-able clay to the head in thin pieces - sculpt in the details of all non-moving parts
  • Add bake-able clay to the torso for all non-moving parts
  • Turn in the puppet up for baking (make sure your name is on the bottom of the block!)
  • Optional: make clothing out of fabric
  • Make at least six mouths (you will likely need at least 8 - figure out what your puppet needs to say and make those mouths based on the phonetic sound shapes) 
  • Turn in your mouth shapes on one parchment card with your name on it
  • Get the puppet back the next day and add movable parts with wax-based clay
  • You can use wax based clay to stick on your replacement mouths
  • Use wax-based clay for the eye pupils, eyelids, eyebrows, neck, and joints
Animation Practice
  • Use Stop Motion Studio
  • Practice animating with small movements 
  • Set up your device so that it doesn't move (overhead or frontal view okay)
  • Make something travel in a small circle using a minimum of 20 frames
  • Have the ending position near the starting positions so it appears to loop endlessly
  • Export your practice as a looping GIF 
Background
  • The simplest allowable background is a piece of paper against cardboard propped up behind your puppet - no classroom, students, etc. should be visible
  • Optional: As a group, or independently, you can make a much more elaborate set for your puppet(s)
  • Use a cardboard partial box shape as a backdrop base (size: it should fit in your locker) 
  • Add colored paper, found objects, etc. to make a background or use a single color not in your puppet (green?) to make a greenscreen you can key out digitally and add a chosen digital background you prefer
Animate your Puppet
  • Film your puppet with an intentional background (you should not see any of the classroom, students, etc. in your photos)
  • 120 frames minimum (10 seconds minimum - 12 fps)
  • Small movements 
  • Use replacement mouths to make character appear to talk/sing to match chosen sound
  • Some other (non-mouth) movement needed (head turn, eye blink, eyebrows raised, etc.)
  • Export in multiple formats: animated GIF, video
  • You can use iMovie to add sound to the animation project if you want more control over the sound
  • The animated GIF doesn't need sound and should loop endlessly. The video should have sound attached and play one time.
Documenting

Stop Motion Animation

Project Requirements

Step 1: Designing Your Project
DRAW YOUR PUPPET DESIGN - 2 Views
  • Use a 1" square and a 1" circle to represent the torso and head of your puppet
  • Draw your puppet idea from the front and the side
  • Try out several ideas before settling on your favorite one. 
  • Turn in all of your attempts, but signify which one is your favorite

Step 1-B: Sound

OPTION: GROUP - or - INDEPENDENT WORK
You have the option to work in a table group, or work independently. You will need to decide this at this step, because it impacts the sound you will use. If you work in a group, you will all use the same sound and animate your puppets in a group on the stage at the same time. You'll all use one background set and your characters will interact.
ABOUT THE SOUND YOU NEED:
You need to create or find 10 to 30 seconds of sound that you will animate your puppet to. You can use dialogue (talking), music (singing), or a combination. You are required to have your character in motion for 10 seconds. The video itself is recommended to be 10 - 30 seconds. 
FINDING OR MAKING YOUR SOUND:
You can download a recording (from a show, movie, song, etc.) or create your own (make a video with your phone or iPad). Remember you only need a short clip, so you'll want to cut down that source footage to a small clip. You can use iMovie or Premiere Rush (free apps on your iPad) to cut your clip down or edit out sections.

Things to Consider

  • YOUR PUPPET WANTS PERSONALITY - give your character interesting facial proportions and distinct features
  • EXAGGERATE - draw your favorite character more than once, and try to exaggerate different features to see how interesting you can make your design
  • CLEAN SOUND - make sure your sound is of good quality. You don't want a bunch of white noise distracting from the character's sounds
  • SHORT CLIP - 10 seconds of video at 12 frames per second requires you to take at least 120 photos of your puppet moving very slowly. Be sure you cut down your clip to a reasonable size (between 10 and 30 seconds is best)

Step 2: Sculpting a Puppet

INNER ARMATURE
  • Use a wood block as the torso and the wood ball as the inside of the head
  • Twist wire for the neck
  • Drill a hole in the block and ball 
  • Option: shape the block or ball 
  • Glue the wire into the holes with E6000 adhesive
CLAY PARTS THAT DON'T MOVE: HEAD
  • Use bake-able clay for the non-moving parts
  • Option: if your design is much larger than the wood ball, use foil to build up the form
  • Use thin layers of clay on the head ball to sculpt all of the details
  • Use a BBQ skewer and popsicle stick for shaping, cutting, carving, and adding. 
  • Use the plastic bag as a surface to roll out your clay (rather than directly on the wood workbench)
  • NO PUPILS IN YOUR EYES, NO EYEBROWS, NO MOUTH
CLAY PARTS THAT DON'T MOVE: TORSO
  • If you don't need the arms to move, you can sculpt the torso over the block.
  • Use foil to build up the form as needed before adding the clay
  • Option: you can make fabric clothes instead of clay clothes, if you prefer
  • If you do need arms, you will need to drill holes for the arm wires, glue the arm wire in, and glue the wire fingers to the wire hand prior to adding the clay.
  • You need to leave the bendable parts without the bake-able clay. NO NECK, NO ELBOW, NO WRIST, NO ARM SOCKET
BAKED CLAY
  • Check to make sure you have all of the non-moveable parts covered
  • Turn in your puppet to get baked in the oven
  • Make sure your name is written on the bottom (on the wooden block)
WAX-BASED CLAY
  • Wax-based clay never dries out and can be repositioned as many times as you need
  • Cover all of the moving areas with wax-based clay
REPLACEABLE MOUTHS
  • Make a set of mouths for your character
  • Make sure they are a good size for your character's face.
  • You must have at least 6, but will probably need 8 to 10 mouths to say all the words in your sound
  • Use bake-able clay - these are touched a lot and need to keep there shape after many uses

Step 2 - B: Making the Set / Background

  • Create a background stand out of cardboard: Hot glue 9" x 9" back to 9" x 6" ground piece. Add two small triangles to keep the right angle. This size background can fit inside a locker.
  • The visual area of the background starts 4 inches up from the table and goes to the top edge of the cardboard, for a 5" x 9" visual area. Make a 6" x 10" visual area for your background. 
  • If you are working as a group, you can attach your background directly to your stand. If you are working individually, or some of your seat mates are working independently, then attach your background to a piece of paper that you can tape on and then switch out. 
  • The minimum requirement is a blank piece of paper attached to your background stand. You cannot see the classroom or students in your photos. You should not see the ground/table in your photos. The bottom of your puppet should be cut off by the edge of the frame.

Preparing for Step 3: Animation Principles

There are 12 Principles of Animation. Watch these videos to learn how to make a convincing illusion of movement.

Step 3 - A: Practicing Animating

  • Animate something going around in a circle
  • Use Stop Motion Studio on your iPad and use the onion skinning slider bar on the left to see what you have done previously
  • Use small movements and at least 20 frames to make one complete rotation
  • Your ending position should be near your starting position - try to make the loop seamless, so we can't tell where it starts and stops.
  • Export your animation as a looping animated GIF

Step 3 - B: Animating Your Puppet
Use Stop Motion Studio to make your animation on your iPad
  • Create a new movie
  • Set up your stage so that you can only see the background and character(s)
  • Make sure the iPad is secure and does not move throughout photo taking
  • Use the slider on the left to create an onion skinning effect so that you can see what you have done previously
  • Make small movements - pick up and replace character when you need to change eyes, eyebrows, mouth, etc. - otherwise leave character in place and make minor adjustments
  • Watch your animation a few times before you are done with it. You can fix mistakes by taking a new frame and moving it in the timeline (drag it)., deleting frames that break continuity, or add a few frames at the end to make it loop.
  • Go to the settings (gear in middle of timeline) and set the playback to looping endlessly.
  • Export as an Animated GIF 

Step 3 - C: Putting the Sound onto the Visuals

You have a few options for how to add sound to your video: Stop Motion Studio, iMovie, and Premiere Rush are all iPad apps that can edit sound and video together. If you have a laptop with more powerful software, you would use Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Animate to add the audio to your animation.
STOP MOTION STUDIO
Staying inside Stop Motion Studio, you can add audio to your animation. The audio can be a voice over or it can be a found source file. If it is a file from a show, movie, etc. be sure you have it downloaded onto your iPad as an audio file. Click on the microphone button on the timeline to access the audio features.
iMOVIE
Export your animation as "All Images" and then import them into iMovie. You'll want to turn off the "Ken Burns effect" so the photos stay still rather than zoom in and out. You'll want to change the frame rate so the photos play faster than the default. Once you have it playing at a fluid speed, import the sound and add it underneath the photos in the timeline.
PREMIERE RUSH
Export your animation as "All Images" and import the set of images to Premiere Rush. Change the duration of the photos to speed up the playback. Import the sound file you want to use and add it to the timeline. Adjust the duration of the individual frames to match the pacing of the sound so that the lips sync with the audio speech.
Once you have the sound and animation together, make sure they sync up well. You can change the timing of the frames by duplicating frames to slow down an action, changing the frame rate for the entire series of frames to speed things up, or changing the duration of a short segment of the animation. 

1 Video with Sound & 1 Looping GIF

  • Export your video with sound as a .mov or .mp4
  • Export your animation without sound as a looping .gif

Email an Image of Your Project

Grading Criteria