So, I am working on an odd project where I am using a photo of a face (image element) as the character. I removed the eyes and mouth from the photo before putting it into toon boom. I then animated the eyes to blink using a few different photos of the person’s eyes (another image element). This part looks pretty cool. But, here is the problem.
I took a picture of the real person’s face while they made each mouth shape I needed for lip syncing purposes and cut them out in photoshop, but it seems to be I can not assign a voice to an image element to do what I want to do. I manually started copying the correct mouth shapes in and it looks great! kinda creepy, but cool.
My question is; Does anyone know a way around this? Any ideas to save me time without putting a cartoon mouth in?
You can bring your mouth images into a drawing element instead of an image element by using the Import and Vectorize With Textures functionality of TBS. Here is a tutorial that shows you how to use this feature. -JK
IMPORT AND VECTORIZE WITH TEXTURES
Unfortunately, I am still currently using Toon Boom Studio 3.0 so I don’t think that I can do this…
I just read the tutorial again and it says that is is possible to do this using Photoshop, is this correct? Do you know of anywhere I can get more information on how to do this?
The vectorize with textures is a new feature as of version 4.0. The part that can be done in Photoshop is the adding a transparent background to your images before import so as not to need to eliminate their background in TBS.
This would still cause you to have to use an image element for your import. You can still use the lip sync feature to show you your mouth positions on the appropriate frames but you will manually have to use the exposure sheet to assign the corresponding mouths from your image element.
This is very doable but more work than being able to map your element to the sound element directly, sorry. Just right click on your sound element column and select display lip sync in your sound element to get the “abcdefgx” assignments to display in your exposure sheet sound element’s column. Name your 8 mouths “abcdefgx” in your image element just the same as you would have done if it were a drawing element and it is just a quick step to type the corresponding letters into you image element’s exposure sheet column. Not automatic but still automated in terms of determining the mouth sequences to the sound element. -JK