lip chart: It can be a difficult task to know how to draw a characters mouth so that it matches the sound at the right frame. To help you solve this problem Toon Boom Studio provides you with the lip sync feature which analyses the contents of a sound clip element and generates a lip chart based on the eight animation phonemes (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and X, which represents silence). You can refer to the lip chart positions as you draw the shape of your character’s mouth. Basically sounds can be broken up phonetically. You don't want to try to match your mouth positions to each letter in a word but rather to the sounds being made. The mouth chart on the left was created by Rob Campbell to help you get a better sense of the mapping of the basic phonemes to the TBS lip chart letters. It is a great resource. Just don't be confused by the use of letters either by Toon Boom or in these mouth charts. The letters represent phonetic sounds. So as you listen to dialog, listen for the sounds and begin to relate your facial muscles to how you make those sounds you don't speak in letters you speak in sounds. You spell with letters.

Lips charts have to be approached based on the orientation of the character speaking. If the character is in profile that will require a different set of mouth positions than if the character is face forward or in 3/4 perspective. The TBS lip sync functionality is a great tool to help you with your lip sync animation but you also need to look at it as just a great starting point. The final work is up to your own artistic skill. Many artists use in-betweening techniques to blend the mouth movements as the character speaks as opposed to "snapping" the characters mouth from position to position. Like any animation you want to first establish your keys and then you can apply in-betweens to smooth out the motions. Another important observation is that facial muscles distort as a character speaks but teeth do not.


I decided to make my own updated TBS mouth chart as the one in the manual was just too small for me. I also added a position for the sounds of L and TH. Hope this is a help.


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