Stop-Motion How To: Making Puppets Talk, Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this post we talked about the different ways to create the lip movements for your puppets. You can check that post out here.


Lip sync is the process of making the lip movements you have animated match up with the pre-recorded voice. When I originally started lip syncing, I thought I could just switch the mouths around while animating, and then after I finished try to match my voice to it by adjusting the speed of my speech. That process didn't work at all. It always turned out looking horrible. I later found out that studios record the voices before they do any animation with lip movement in it. Once the studio has the recording, they slow it down to discover how much of the sound takes place in one frame and then note it on x-sheet for the animators to use later.

Thankfully, programs have been created for just this propose. Magpie is probably the most popular lip sync program. It's been used in a number of professional productions, including Corpse Bride and Creature Comforts. It's a great program, stocked with great features. The single license download costs $250 USD, and you can check it out here.

If you're unable to spend that much money, you can download JLipSync, a sweet free lip sync program for the PC and MAC. This program can be really confusing to download (at least it was for me), but luckily Marc Spess made a video tutorial outlining the downloading steps. You can check that out here.


Making your puppets talk can be a long and hard process, but if you're willing to commit your time and effort, I assure you it will be well worth it!