Lip Sync Practice: Making a Character Say “Hi”

After working on motion exercises like the bouncing ball and pendulum, I wanted to try something more advanced: lip syncing. I thought it would be fun to make a simple character say the word “Hi”. It sounded easy, but I quickly learned that matching mouth movements to sound is much trickier than I expected.

First, I imported a short audio clip of me saying “Hi” into Clip Studio Paint. The program automatically displayed the sound waveform, which was really helpful because I could see exactly where the sound started and ended.

Next, I researched mouth shape charts (also called phoneme charts). For “Hi,” I only needed a few basic shapes:

• A closed mouth for the “H” sound.

• An open wide shape for the “i” vowel.

• A neutral mouth for resting.

              ( This is the reference I used for the animation. I obtained it from Pinterest)

 
The biggest challenge was timing. At first, my mouth shapes didn’t match the audio. The “i” sound was opening too late, and it looked like the character was lagging behind the voice. I had to keep scrubbing the timeline back and forth to nudge the frames into place.

I also realized that the mouth shouldn’t change shape on every frame. If it moves too quickly, it looks jittery. Instead, I held certain shapes for a couple of frames, especially during the longer vowel sound. This made the lip sync smoother and more believable.

When I exported the animation as a video, it wasn’t perfect—but I could clearly hear the audio and see the character saying “Hi.” 

Learning outcomes: This exercise taught me that lip syncing isn’t just about the mouth. It’s about timing, expression, and rhythm. Next time, I’ll try a longer phrase and maybe add some eye blinks and head motion to make it more expressive.