Before computer animation, how did animators on pencil and paper lip sync the characters with the recorded dialogue?
In: Technology
There’s a thing called an X sheet (exposure sheet). You plan out each vowel shape at the frame corresponding to the audio timing. Esentially you’re mapping out the important shapes to create the illustion of a word. So it would read top to bottom like ‘F -Ah—Th-e–(close mouth)’ and that might be over 14 frames which would be half a second. But when you key out your shot, you’re drawing the ‘highlights’ of the acting, the most extreme poses. You’d add the mouth shape in these key poses. It helps to really emphasise a movement, especially if it’s a ‘F/V’ mouth shape or a ‘A’.
Often there’s a plan for the animation to tell the story of the script. But the dialogue was generally recorded first and then the animators could match the dialogue and emotion of delivery. The lip movement is a little vague but there are mouth shapes for certain sounds that make it seem matched. A scene might be redone or the audio could be recorded if something really needs to change though so the process could be more of a loop. It’s still fairly similar to computer animation
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