how do i get my characters to speak?? lip synking do i have to put bones in theyr mouth??
There is multiple way (well, 2 good way I know) to do so.
-RVK, or now… shapekey :-p
-Bones.
Shape is easy as you just need to remodel the face for different pose your mouth will take when the character speak. (one pose for each major letter). Animating with Shape is as simple a setting Key from 0 - 1 in the IPO windows or playing with the slider in action windows.
Bone is a different approach giving with a lot more flexibility but require more job to set up properly. Animating with bone rig in the mouth can also be a headatch because you have to work with Action in the NLA to mix everything together, set start and end of the NLa strip, set blend… Using Action by setting a pose in each action and them mixing them in NLa is the way to go.
or… both! 
My lip-sync tests were created with Shape Keys to control the lips and also a little bit of chin, tongue, cheek and nose deformation. Major jaw movements, some extra cheek movements and some tongue movements were controlled with Bones.
The advantage of this method is that you can change the shape of certain sounds by setting a shape key and changing the jaw position. This can offer more control than just setting shape keys at different values.
One major advantage of bones is that you can change the mesh and keep the bones but with shape keys changes to the mesh can result in the loss of all keys or the need to make changes to every key to reflect changes made to the base shape.
The Ludwig method of driving shapes via bones is a nifty solution and could be extended to take account of a number of “standard” mouth shapes.