ABSTRACT
The first thing to be recognized in dialog animation is that it is not just about making the lips move in perfect synchronization with the audio track! It is important to do this, of course, but really great dialog animation is all about emotion and expression, mood and posture. The facial expression reflects in the emotional and mood content that is built into a character's actions. The lip synching should be the cherry on the cake, where the mouth finally opens and closes, and distorts recognizably, in time with the spoken words. Before any dialog animation can be attempted, the audio track has to be recorded and a track breakdown achieved, which is the frame-by-frame analysis of the phonetic sounds being made throughout the entire piece. Watch a great actor on the screen deliver a line of powerful dialog and one will see a vast range of emotion communicated in quite small and subtle ways.
