As I am using Adobe Flash for ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’, I will be taking advantage of the symbol system that most Flash Animators use, particularly with lip syncing.
While most front on mouths can pass without the jaw moving, a side on mouth requires it to move in order to give the illusion of speaking. This is an example of symbols being used to make lip syncing easier. Unfortunately I do not have access to plug ins such as KeyFrame Caddy, however this process is quite fast when you have been using Flash for nearly 5 years ahaha.
This is a quick test of the technique I will using, hence the scrappy mouth symbols. However, when cleaned up, this will look much more polished. Each symbol is a different phoneme. In the clean up, I will have at least 15 different mouths to use in lip syncing. I can make symbols for both happy and neutral, and even any crazy ones I might like to have Mick make.
A plus side to the symbol system is that I can easily copy Mick into other scenes and recycle the ‘rig’ or ‘puppet’. Enjoy!