How To Make Lip Sync Animation Easy Step by Step Tutorial

It’s Animation Time again! I’ll teach you how to make lip sync animation using our easy step by step tutorial!

You already know some of the Basic Principles of Animation, it’s time to put everything into practice and learn the new process of lip syncing!

Read on!

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Lip Sync Animation

Kids love watching their favorite cartoons – Mickey Mouse, Peppa Pig, Shaun the Sheep… the list is endless! They love how funny and special these characters move and more often, they are curious about the way they talk.

To make this possible in animation, we apply the process of Lip Synchronization, commonly known as lip sync.

Lip sync is the process of synchronizing the sound to the character, particularly on the movement of the mouth.

Talking Cat Animation

Let’s make our talking cat animation to apply the process of lip syncing!

Watch also our quick video tutorial and see how I used the process of lip syncing and the principles of animation to complete my talking cat in a flipbook and in FlipaClip!

Enjoy animating, young artists!

Materials

8 pieces of small rectangular papers
1 pencil/pen

Instructions

I. Making our flipbook

If you do not have a pad of paper for our animation, we can make our very own flipbook!

Step 1. Fold and cut a paper (letter size) in four equal parts.

Step 2. Divide another paper into 4 parts, then number all the cut papers at the bottom left corner from 1-8.

For the purpose of our fun activity, we will animate a talking cat saying, “Hello!”

But first, we need to know the correct mouth shapes to use for the word “Hello”.

II. Drawing the mouth shapes

Mouth shapes are drawn based on how sounds are produced. I’ve included 12 of the most used mouth shapes in the above picture.

You can also draw your own set of mouth shapes and expressions using a mirror!

Now, let’s try to draw the mouth shapes for the word “HELLO”

III. Drawing the frames

Step 1. On all eight frames, draw the parts of the talking cat that will be static, or the parts that will not move.

Draw a circle for the head, triangles for the ears, and an oval for the right arm. Aside from the face, we will also animate the left arm.

Step 2. Draw Frames 1 and 2.

Bring out your pencil, eraser, and the first two frames of our animation.

For Frame 1, let’s start by drawing a smiling cat’s face. Draw two circles with dots inside for the eyes. Draw an oval below the eyes for the muzzle, then add a large dot for the nose, and a curve for its smile.

For Frame 2, the mouth of the talking cat starts to open. First, draw the same eyes and muzzle. The nose should be a little higher than Frame 1 so draw it along the line of the muzzle. Then, draw the first mouth shape we drew for “Hello”.

Let’s draw a waving hand. Draw an upright oval near the face.

Step 3. Draw Frames 3 and 4.

For Frame 3, repeat the step on how you drew the eyes and nose. Draw a wider muzzle for the next mouth shape which is wider, then draw an oval on the side of the face for the hand.

For Frame 4, repeat the same steps for the eyes, muzzle, and nose, then draw the next mouth for the /l/ sound. Draw the hand similar on Frame 2.

Step 4. Draw Frames 5 and 6.

For Frame 5, use the same steps again, then draw the mouth shape for the long sound of /OH/. Draw the same hand like in Frame 1.

For Frame 6, draw a narrower muzzle similar to the mouth shape.

Step 5. Draw Frames 7 and 8.

For Frame 7, draw a rounder muzzle similar to the mouth shape which shows the last part of /OH/ sound.

For Frame 8, draw the same figure as in Frame 1.

Step 6. Flip it!

Arrange the cards with 1 at the bottom and 8 on top, then flip. You’ll magically see your cat saying, “Hello!”

Very good! You’ve done a great job with your lip syncing animation!

Tips for art-mazing success:

If you want to do it digitally, try FlipaClip. It is an amazing app where you can do your animation just like a flipbook.
Try to create your own mouth shapes and practice animating different words.
Add colors to your frames to add Appeal to your animation.

Here are other lip syncing animations made by our young artists at the Creativity School.

Animations from Creativity School by Sindu N. (top-left and bottom-right), Filpa I. (top-right), and Scarlett L (bottom-left)

Share with us in the comment section below your lip syncing animations!

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Here are other awesome blogs about the basic principles of animation filed with cool animation activities!

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