Hi, this is my first time doing face animation and lip syncing. I would love to hear your critiques on this animation I made with the Rain rig. I Think the hand and arm movements before she makes the two fists can be more expressive, what are your thoughts? 
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Well, the audio is muffled and hard to hear what she’s saying. “I’ve been to a million artisans”?
My advice would be to act this out yourself on video. Note what your face does while you’re saying this. Use the video as a guide. It should help a lot. Also put a mirror right above your monitor and use your own face as a guide.
I’ve never used this model rig. How much control do you have over the facial expressions?
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I would say “don’t shy away from the mouth sounds” and make her open her mouth more and move the upper lip more.
The guy saying “what” is just distracting.
Also you could move her right and up in the frame.
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Thanks for your critique! I will use a more clear audio sample next time.
It’s a pretty complex rig so i would say theres allot of control over the facial expressions, but it’s the first complex character i have ever used, so I can’t really compare it with others.
Here is a link where you can download the Rain Rig if you are interested 
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This is a pretty advanced section of audio. My few suggestions would be try to find a slower piece of audio to lip sync to because it is easier to learn with something slower.
Also it almost looks like the body was animated last. I’m not sure if that’s what happened but it looks a bit choppy compared to the lips. It could be because it’s just so fast. Half of what makes lip sync so appealing is the body language that goes with it.
The arms feel very choppy, I believe its because you just have a few key frames for them and they just move from one to the other with no timing. The fingers give it away, they are moving at the same time that the arms are when they arrive at the last frame and come into a closed position. Offset the fingers and slow in and slow out the arms with their movement; that should improve the jitter a bit.
I would recommend animating the body language first then go on to the more meticulous things like facial expressions and then lip sync last. That makes a simple system to follow when doing any action. That way things aren’t being rushed and then spend time working on the overall appeal of the whole action and not just the face.(Even though the face is soooo much fun to animate)
I believe this was a very good shot and great practice. For just starting out on an advanced rig this is very impressive. Keep practicing.
Also if you want to check it out, here is a great place to learn animation.
This place is awesome and I have learned so much from watching the animation critiques.
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Hi there, thanks for your reaction! Yes you are totally right, it was a mistake to choose such a fast paced audio clip for practicing beginner lipsyncing.
You are right about the body. I animated it after i did the face with all the facial expressions. I wondered what the correct workflow is for lip syncing and body animation. I figured it would be more easy to first do the whole face before i worked on the body because the head would else be moving around to much for me to see if the mouth shapes are done correctly. I would have to change my view for ever frame. Is the workflow you recommend based on your preferences or does it really improve your animation in the end?
I should work more on the arms and hands I agree. I will post a new one when I am satisfied with the movements. I have animated the arms in IK, I think thats why they look kinda weird as well. for some reason I cant switch from IK to FK on the rig (I don’t know how to do it 
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Thanks for the link, I was already looking for a second place to find some critiques, I’ll check it out 
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Your welcome! 
The workflow is one of mine. I’m sure there are others out there but this one works for me. I use the nla editor in blender to separate the facial animation from the body animation there, so I don’t have to move my camera around to see what I’m doing. I simply animate them separately in two different actions and then hide the body action and animate the face after.
This is a good tutorials about what I just mentioned.
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ooh thank you so much thats really usefull, I never heard of the NLA editor before
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I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!
Question: Did you do vertex groups for phonemes? Or did you just hand animate the mouth for sync? I’m about to dive into lip syncing with Rain as well and wondered where you started.
Thanks!
John