The Mouth-abet

between chasing dollars, i'm still trying to teach myself animation. my latest conquest has been trying to sync the dialogue of a screaming san francisco lunatic to that the lips of my cartoon version of him.

the whole thing has been a lot harder than i expected, but i did come up with a simplifier i like to call the mouth-abet. it's basically a little chart of facial expressions that might be handy in an active conversation. it's also, apparently, not my idea. after designing my first mouth-abet, i was quickly told that this is how all animators work and that i am by no means the first to discover it.

it's technically called an animation mouth chart, and has been in use for decades. i can say at least my name for it is way cooler.
what doesn't exist yet-- and should-- is a mouth-abet keyboard.

if i were a programmer, i would design a tool that allowed animators to type dialogue into their computer and watch the proper expressions from the mouth-abet appear on whichever character's face. do you know how much time that would save?

it's an excellent idea and if you're a programmer you are welcome to steal it-- i'd just like to see someone create it. i don't know much about those sorts of things, but i don't imagine it to be a whole lot harder than a lot of other shitty programs out today.

oh, but if you are a programmer and you do steal my idea, will you please name the program "wishnack's tool"? that way people would have a perfectly good reason to make penis jokes every time they used it.

"i like to use wishnack's tool and hit the O key, just to see that mouth open all wide."

thanks.