Datasheet

12■n Chapter 1: Learning the Basics of Lip Sync
Most of these are what I’ll call “absolute” shapes: EEs are wide, but they don’t neces-
sarily need to be the widest shape ever—they just need to be identified as being wide.
Same with OOs or OHs. They don’t need to be the narrowest, just easily identifiable as a
narrow pose. That’s how the system works. Instead of creating 38 unique keys that con-
tort the whole mouth into an unmistakable shape, we use fewer, simpler components that
can be combined in different recipes to create those bigger unmistakable shapes. Working
this way gives us far more flexibility to customize each recipe to each performance, with
much less work than it would be to create a specific shape for each sound and then also
have to layer other things on top to customize it or fight conflicts.
Relative Shapes
There are shapes that are relative. To make this distinction clear, in Table 1.3, anything
with an er in its description is a relative shape. An OO sound is a narrow shape; it’s abso-
lute. An R is simply narrower. Usually, that just means a shift in the direction of Narrow.
That said, absolute shapes take precedence over relative shapes. A narrower between two
narrows need not get narrower because it is less important. Sometimes, in that situation,
a narrower may even go wider so as to strengthen the surrounding narrows. Absolutes
can occasionally become relative if they are piled up next to each other.
Here’s an example of absolutes becoming relative. In the phrase “How are you?” the
OO in you is not as narrow as the OO of you in “Do you chew?” In the latter, because all
the sounds are OOs, there need to be variations in the intensity, and the OO in you is the
strongest.
The process of deciding which shapes take precedence in strings of similar sounds is
explained in Chapter 4, “Visemes and Lip Sync Technique.”
If you’re a little confused, that’s all right—understanding comes with practice. A lot
of the system involves looking at a sentence and, instead of trying to define the shapes in
absolutes, seeing them in relation to the previous shapes and the shapes that follow.
“Who are you and what are you doing?”: Wide/Narrow
We know that we can cheat our visemes using just Wide/Narrow/Open/Closed, as per
Table 1.1 and Table 1.2, so now we need some practice actually identifying some of those
visemes in an example.
I use the phrase “Who are you and what are you doing?” as an example here because
it has all sorts of Wide/Narrow travel. I’ll identify the Wide/Narrow sequences first, and
then do the Open/Closed pass in the next section. I’ve included images with both Open/
Closed and Wide/Narrow to make it easier to follow, but you should focus on the width
more than the height in this section. Much of the information and reasoning here involves
things not yet explained—but rest assured, these things are going to be explored later.
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