For the task record I decided to choose lip-sync. I think this task for me is very new experience. Because I have never manually drawn lip-sync frame by frame so it is also a big challenge. Additionally, I know that this is the last exercise for unit 1 so I want to make it completer and more delicate. So, I follow the normal animation process to do it: Choose theme–Think about the monologue– Rough Storyboard– Record the sound– Take video reference– Character Design– Draw Key frame– Add breakdown and In-between– Coloring and Shading– Drawing Background– Final Compositing.
Choosing Theme
The first step is choosing the theme. Tutor provided us four different theme and I finally chose ” If my city could speak”. The city I chose is Xi’an. I realized I have never did animation which is about my own city and the other reason is that my city is a very famous tourist city because of its many thousand years history and ancient architectures. Besides that, it used to be ancient capital of 13 dynasties with rich cultural heritage. So Xi’an always attract a significant amount of visitors and take photos everywhere it could lead that traffic jam and other inconvenient. The locals felt it was too crowded so they didn’t dare to go out. I supposed that if Xi’an can talk it maybe want to roast social phenomenon but still welcome visitors. And I can play with this to make a funny short animation.
So the first version of my line is “I used to host emperors… now I host those people with shining light box pretending they ‘discovered’ me!”
But later I found that it is not funny enough and can’t show the feature of my city. I also record many times at the school studio, it let me feel a bit anxious. Later, during a recording session, I accidentally said something in Xi’an dialect, which gave me a flash of inspiration. I quickly fixed my line into Xi’an dialect and add more Xi’an Specialties.
Here is the updated version: “天哪，这里本来是千年古都，咋现在活成了背景板了，一天到晚被发光砖头怼脸拍拍拍，把我挤成肉夹馍了都!”
English Translation: ““Oh man, this place used to be a grand ancient capital, and now how come it just become a backdrop! I swear, I get flashed by glowing bricks all day long—feels like I’m being squished into a roujiamo by the crowds!”
Hint: Roujiamo, often called the “Chinese hamburger,” is a popular street food from Xi’an. It features tender, slow-cooked meat stuffed into a crispy, chewy flatbread, offering a flavorful and satisfying bite. I metaphor whole city as the meat and visitors as bun to highlight the extremely crowd.
Storyboard & Reference Video
Here are my very rough and simple storyboard and reference video I took. Storyboard could facilitate me control timing and remind certain actions for the later taking reference video. The main purpose of video reference is to observe the cooperation of my facial expression, lip movement and body action. It can be easier to capture the keyframe.
Character Design
After research, I feel that the Terracotta Warriors are good choice as the main character. Not only because it is one of the most famous ancient symbols of Xi’an and attracted tons of traveler, but also it is one of the Eight Wonders of the World and more representative.
For the character design I researched lots of picture of Terracotta Warriors did many iterations. I also used shape language to help me do some silhouette. I think the whole shape of whole character could be rectangle and also added a little bit circle element. Because I used to observe that the faces of locals in Xi’an are more towards tender rectangle and according to the shape psychology the rectangle means strength, reliable, stable. Circle means friendly. It is also suitable for the nature of people in Xi’an. I also like the design of big mouth because it can enhance funny effect and easy to do lip-sync.
Character Design of Terracotta Warriors
Because Terracotta Warriors are all male. In order to make the voice more be line with character setting I sent my recording version to my father and let him imitate my tone in Xi’an dialect record another sound version for me.
Production Process
The next step is to draw the key frames and inbetweens in tvp. In order to animate easier, I separated mouth, head, body into different layers. During doing the lip-sync, I always reference my video and mirror to make them more accurate. Due to my lots of monologues. it was a bit hard to capture some words and took me long time to do adjusting.
I also added blurred crowed and other famous ancient architecture such as A Pang Palace and Big Wild Goose Pagoda in the background to let audience more immersive.
After coloring and shading, I import background and character animation into After Effect do some compositing. And also add other easy animation detail. For example, when the camera start moving, the picture in the camera could be little bigger than real life.
In the end you may find that the character is holding a sign. This sign is very popular in China. And the format is always like ” I miss you in XXX (the city)” People can see this in nearly every travel spot. This sign could even be a photo spot by itself.
Additionally, In order to make the whole animation more immersive, I added some sound effects in Premier, such as noisy ambient sounds, camera shooting sounds, etc. Since the entire audio is in Chinese, I also added English subtitles below the animation.
Conclusion
By producing lip-sync animation, I gained a deeper understanding of lip-sync, learned how to split syllables and match lip shapes to make the characters more natural and vivid. At the same time, I realized the importance of morphological exaggeration and rhythm control, and needed to combine facial expressions and body language to enhance expressiveness. In addition, I became more familiar with the animation production process, mastered the use of storyboards, keyframes and inbetween animations, and improved my time management and detail optimization capabilities. This experience made me realize that animation is not only a technology, but also a combination of rhythm, emotion and performance, which will help me lot for the future creations.