Mouths

Just thought I'd show you a series of mouths I use for making the main character talk.  I'm pretty happy with the way animating dialog is turning out so far.  I've been testing out the mouths first by using After Effects.  I have a layer with a mouthless puppet and then insert each mouth on it's own layer for the time needed to portray the syllable it needs to.  This acts as a test and a guide.  I can then follow the quicktime I make from my After Effects file and organize the mouths, decipher which frame they should be on and make an x-sheet to follow while animating.  I don't want the final mouths to be an After Effects thing.  I'd rather put paper mouths on the puppet frame by frame as I animate.  It blends in so much better this way, and I'm really going for that practical stop motion feel.

By the way, Happy New Year!  2015 will finally be the year this project sees the light of day!  Episode 1 is in the can, and episode 2 is half way there.  I don't like declaring release dates, just because I never know what it will really take to do it right till I get there, but I'm really hoping to get the first two episodes on line in February 2015.  Then, subsequent episodes will follow when they're done.  Initially I'm thinking 6 episodes total which I'll release over the coming year.  Cheers!