Forum - View topicLip flaps in western & eastern animation.
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Flash33
 Posts: 88 Location: Florida |
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Something I'm sure many of us (or at least I) have noticed over the years of watching animated films and shows is how lip flaps are done. When it comes to eastern animation (i.e. anime) characters mouths mostly just move up and down and that's it. While some scenes may have more movement than others for the most part it's as minimal as possible with little to no regard to matching spoken words/syllables. Compare this to western animation (both 2D & 3D) where it's common for mouths to match the words/syllables spoken as much as possible.
Two examples of western animation that I can think of this happening are Gravity Falls (2D) and Cars (3D). For eastern animation the only example I can think of is The Duke of Death & His Maid, though it has been a bit since I watched it so I could be misremembering. Now the argument could be made that because anime is often dubbed into many different languages these days there's no point in making the lip flaps perfectly match the spoken JP language, yet at least for anime English dubs they usually edit them anyway so that when the VA stops talking the character stops talking as well (JP sentences often run longer compared to ENG ones). Perhaps it's just a cultural difference/issue and/or a time/budget difference/issue that causes this to occur, but it's rather interesting to think about nonetheless. |
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gsilver
Posts: 657 |
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The traditional response is that western animation tends to animate for the vocal performance, so it can more closely match it with more elaborate movements, while anime is animated first. The thing I'm wondering, in anime, since it's just mouth flaps in a lot of situations, why isn't there more of an effort to sync them in post? Especially when it's digital animation. AMVs take already finished animation and sync the lip flaps to whatever script they inject all the time.
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11492 Location: Frisco, TX |
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I think part of it is the Japanese language itself. The structure of the words and syntax feel like they have a lot more syllables and stops. Also, if you compare normal, calm, conversational Japanese to it's over-the-top acting counterpart, there's a huge difference in how fast and exaggerated the latter is. If the mouth flaps don't match as accurately, I'm totally okay with that, as long as the performances are good and/or consistent.
Plus, I figure it'd be a little more difficult and time-consuming to try and get all of that to match up perfectly every single time they record lines, considering the sheer amount of episodes and series the industry puts out every season. I'm sure the seiyuu not only have anime roles to record, but probably other things on their schedule throughout their work days. I don't know how busy Western voice actors usually are, but I get this perception that voice acting in Japan keeps those actor/actresses busier, and thus they have less time to perfect something like syncing mouth flaps. |
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AsleepBySunset
Posts: 246 |
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My understanding, which isn't industry level but none of the other responses have been so whatever... is that in the west, animation school heavily emphasises the "9 old men's" principles of animation, these same principles of animation don't influence the anime industry much at all, even the beloved Ghibli films pay little mind to stuff like squash and stretch. Just like how western style newspaper cartooning (Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts) has little effect on Japanese newspaper cartoons.
In the same vain, western animation tutorials seem to emphasis mouth-shape-to-consonant/vowel-sound charts, you can probably find a couple on line, I'm fairly certain the animators ref these off a literal style guide when animating movies and TV... these as far as I'm aware aren't prominent in Japan. In Japan the style is just, "mouth is open when you make a sound and closes when you don't make a sound" |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10082 Location: Virginia |
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The Japanese system for lip flaps is easier and therefore less expensive and it works. I've yet to see an anime where the absence of specific mouth movements broke the spell that I'm seeing the character talking. Most anime is made under serious pressure with regard to both time and money. Why would they adopt a system that costs more and takes more time?
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Beltane70
 Posts: 4013 |
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They occasionally do match lip flaps to the actual dialog, but usually in theatrical anime. While I don't know how many anime films have actually done this, I do know that the Akira movie animated the mouth movements to the recorded dialog and was used as one of its selling points when it was released back in 1988. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10082 Location: Virginia |
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@Beltane70
That makes sense, since theatrical anime is supposed to have the benefit of more time and money to make. I've noticed that when some people want to praise the animation of a TV series they will refer to "almost theatrical quality" animation. |
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