LipSync – X-sheets and mouth shapes

I then began making an animatic, roughly drawn on paper and then cleaned up digitally. I kept my moodboards in mind when creating a background concept. Knowing I wanted my piece to reside underwater and on transportation, I sketched an underground tube. My main reason for choosing this mode of transportation over a bus or a car was the distance between me and the character. It allowed me to play around with the body movements and backgrounds without the piece seeming too chaotic or overly packed.

I kept my animatic simplistic, aiming for a smooth transition between key poses within the audio. This, in turn, allowed me to begin working on my x-sheet with ease. However, I regret not spending more time perfecting my animatic. While I kept it simple to help me narrow it down to the main sections, I had very few director notes to help me when animating. I would have struggled less with in-betweening if I had a visual reference and a smooth slide of the action occurring.