the Scarlet Letters

VERY Rankin/Bass-a-riffic, Sven! Test 2 is improved over the first. I don't agree with a few of the mouth shape illustrations in terms of actual mouth shapes for those sounds/letters but this style of animation seems to have that as one of its hallmarks. So I'd call this outing a total success.

Wow, I had no idea that it's this complicated. Now try making the good professor speak Chinese...I wonder if the rules would stay the same?

That's a really interesting question, Shu-Ju!

I have an animation book from an English author, and the mouth shapes that she suggests for lip-sync don't match up with the ones that I see most U.S. authors describing. I haven't been able to decide if this was just an area of animation that she's personally less familiar with, or if there's an actual linguistic difference at work.

Most of the rules for doing lip-sync would stay the same regardless of what language you're working in, I think. One author seems to break mouth shapes into three basic categories: open-mouthed vowels, semi-open-mouthed consonants, and closed-mouthed consonants...

So, different languages are going to have some unique sounds (particularly when you contrast asiatic and latin-based ones) -- but the number of ways that a mouth can move in order to create sound is surely going to be finite.

I don't know...my husband is learning Chinese, and it's pretty astounding how many weird shapes his mouth can contort into in an effort to make some simple sounds. I'm always having to say "no, no, no, not like that...look at my lips!"

Now I'm wondering if this can be a teaching tool -- with the exaggerated mouth size & shapes, it might be easier for someone to catch on.

SWEET!! Lovin' the new pup, man, especially the tuft of hair. Nice job on the synch. Dec. 30 SMS, be there or be square :) Any reason you used a wire armature and not one of your ambassatures?

Why wire instead of ball&socket? A couple of reasons.

a) Check out the stats on how long it's taken me to make my various armatures:

• the Ambassador (brass) = 19 hours
• the Diplomat (brass) = 23 hours
• the Man of Steel (steel) = 60 hours
• the Drifter (steel) = 45 hours
• Professor Ichbonnsen (aluminum wire) = 2 hours

b) My puppet fab work breaks into three categories: build-up puppets, cast puppets, and ball&socket armatures. With this puppet I was mostly working on improving my build-up technique.

c) The Prof's head is detachable... When I put it on the Drifter armature, the pup is 9.5" tall. On the wire armature, the pup's only 7.75" tall. I'm not good enough at miniaturization yet to do an armature that would match the scale of the puppet I sketched. (NOT that I really chose scale very carefully! That's something I should deal with in future pups!)

d) Making a ball&socket armature is still such a big deal for me, I'm keeping all my b&s armatures so far for display. When I'm comfortable enough with fabrication that one is as good as another -- then I expect I'll start putting b&s armatures into puppets.

e) In professional productions, b&s armatures are generally reserved for "hero puppets" and for projects that have feature film budgets. I'm increasingly understanding why this makes both financial and scheduling sense. If a film is going to be 5 minutes or under, then it probably makes the most sense to use wire.

[An exception: Fat puppets, where the armature has to move a lot of foam or silicone -- you probably need a b&s armature in such cases.]

Cooool... er! The changes made it even better.