Portrait

[pixelcat]

I drew this character portrait, and started animating the talking animation, but I realized when I played it back thatÃ,  I don't know what i'm doing, really.Ã,  Anyone know where I can get photos/animations of mouths talking?

Edit: worked on it some more...

*Image removed

Other than the mouth, is the animation/character alright?Ã,  Any C&C welcome, please. Thx.

[ScottDoom]

The character looks awesome.

As for the animation, the eyes look really good. I'm not sure what the mouth is trying to do though. Are you going to just make a mouth animation loop, or different animations for each word sound? If you want, I could record my mouth moving with my camera really quick but I'm sure you could find a clip on the net.

[Darth Mandarb]

The pixel-ing is great!!

The mouth (animation) needs a little help, but it isn't horrible.

I'm gonna see about finding some tutorials about 'talking' animations ...

[InCreator]

Pixelcat, stop messing with this mouth and start doing a tutorial. You possess knowlegde not known to many. Where in the hell did you learn to draw like that?

[Nacho]

Wow! It reminds me the close takes of "Shadow of the comet". I would suggest jaw movement, but I'm not sure if such a use of energies would interest you, many many people would consider the animation totally correct judgind the overall feeling of it.

[Hinders]

wooh!
awesome
it really looks like that you have scanned a painting

[scotch]

You need to draw few different visemes, shapes for different sounds.  Put them in a nice sequence so it looks like he's speaking, and them put in some in between frames if it doesn't seem smooth enough.
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/lipsync/lipsync.html has some illustrations of different shapes.  Adding a bit of movement of the whole head helps too, but that could be a bit of work on a complicated face like that.

I like your style.

[Evil]

The hair doesnt look right to me.

[InCreator]

Right, Evil. Hair.
The shadow under hair gives a feeling like he's wearing wig.

Also, try to judge the ear again. For me, It seems to be positioned a bit too high and angle is maybe a bit wrong too.
But face, face distracts so much, It's really damn nicely done. So I may be wrong.

[pixelcat]

Thanks for the comments & suggestions.

I added an update... still need to add some frames, and give the head more movement.  I'm actually half-done another portrait, so i'm splitting time between both.

ScottDoom : Thanks for the offer, the link scotch gave helped out quite a bit, though.

scotch : Thanks for the link, really helped.

Evil : Thanks for the suggestion, think it looks better like that.

InCreator : Not sure about the ear, i'll see about fixing it.

[Evil]

The ear is fine. Maybe a few pixels too tall, like 3 or 4.

[Phemar]

That looks bloody awesome!

Good Work Pixel-Cat!!!

[Bernie]

This looks totally great! The hair may look a tad too solid, but other than that... awesome!

[Daz]

that look aweinspireing :o

i take it you are going to put a tongue and teeth and stuff in his mouth.

lovley work keep it up

-Daz

[Estaog]

Totally great!  :o
And i agree you should add some theet.
But other than that its great!

[TerranRich]

I also agree, put stuff in the mouth, like teeth, a tongue, perhaps some dark red coloration.

Do a search for "phonemes" and you might get pictures of people saying letters and sounds. Make sure you take a look at "f", "th", "oo", "j", "l", etc.

[m0ds]

Excellent graphic. Love the detail - seems near enough perfect to me.

You should be doing the close-ups for FoY.

[Mr_Frisby]

Best way to do it would be LipSync - make sounds (a,e,i,o,u ect) and watch yourself in the mirror - make sketches while your doing it, some reference would help but not as much as seeing yourself doing it and understanding how the facial muscles work - not just the mouth moves.

[LGM]

I hope you're aware of AGS's lipsyncing abilities. If someone said that and I missed it, please shoot me.. But if not, well there you go. Follow Scotch's tutorial and you'll have a great in-game talking animation.

And yes, add a toungue and teeth.

[pixelcat]

Thanks for the comments and feedback... much appreciated.

I will be putting teeth in... there's a bit of a tongue in there, but it's not really visable.   I'll be fixing the hair as well.

Moebius - Thanks for the suggestion, I found some much better reference photos for speech.

Mr_Frisby - Thanks for the suggestion as well... I've done a bit, but it would probably help out to do it some more.

[lgm] - I just read about them last night, actually, sounds really cool.  Thanks for the suggestion.