I have made a concerted effort to study animation lately, and by that, I mean the specifics of body weight, personality, movement and the dreaded lip syncing! To help, I purchased two books for a ridiculously low price. And FREE SHIPPING! 
“Character Animation Crash Course” by Eric Goldberg was on sale at Amazon for $23 bucks. So was Richard Williams’ “The Animators Survival Kit”. I’ve thumbed through them both and they are littered with great information and images regarding the animated object. These are not How-To-Draw books.
I decided I wanted to tackle lip syncing this weekend. “Tackle” is a big word, and it’s not even accurate in this case. But the dream is still alive.
Considering I left my wacom pen tablet at the office, I was limited to what I could accomplish. This means the character’s head could not really move or be animated, but I could focus on timing the mouth to the words instead.
And as I was reading the chapter from Goldberg’s book on lip syncing, I was amused to see this line:
Of course, I don’t need a book to tell me this! 
So for a moment, picture yourself sitting in a room watching a movie. Where are you looking? What is attracting your attention? Light? Beauty? Movement? Or are you staring at the person’s mouth making sure he is actually saying those words? When I watch the following animation two different ways, there are two different results:
1. Staring at the mouth to check for accuracy shows me that the animator isn’t very good at this. 
2. Looking at the character in general, and watching the mouth move through periphery shows me the mouth movement is not bad at all!
I’m curious to know what your thoughts are.
This line comes from Mark Rolli, who spoke it in a live-action film attempt I did/tried back in the 2000′s called “Wooden”. The line itself does not describe what the movie is about. Or does it? Furthermore, the delivery of the line is supposed to work on many levels, not just the mouth moving, but the face stretching/squashing, the head moving, and the arms and body moving in rhythm with the words. Again, without a pen tablet, this is all I can do. You get the idea though.
UPDATE 7-8-11 – I have just found this interesting trick for lip syncing using Flash and the “Mouth Comp”. Or view the tutorial:
Lastly, while I was pulling images from my camera, I found this one I shot of a bird in my backyard. He is obviously thankful that I let the weeds grow that tall! 
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
YouTube
Hahah, you don’t want to avoid me, and you know it
It was kind of hard to casually observe the lip-synch in the animation because of the mouth parts flying all around, but it looked good. As you said, when part of an overall animation, nobody is sitting and watching the mouth.
I agree with Mark, I thought it looked fine. Don’t be so damn anal. Plus, if it’s not perfect it may have a “vintage” feel/look to it i.e. Speed Racer dubbed.