Which comes first , the animation , or the voice actors ?
Which comes first , the animation , or the voice actors ?- cgi special effects for filmmaking
I kinda have a dilema .
I want to make a short animation ( like 5 minutes ). But i am lacking voice actors for a few characters .
I just want to know , what i should do first.
Create the animation and give the characters lip motion from what the script is and how i think it should be timed .
Get the voices recorded , and then do the animation with the lip synching off these voicec .
this probably seams simple , the second one of course will produce the best results . But my actors might not have faith in the project until it is mostly completed ( i'm in high school , so i'm not looking for pros, just my drama department )and they have something to see .
Any help would be great .
Thanx.
hmmm...i dont know how its done professionally, but i do know what i've seen on TV. sometimes the animators watch the video taped voice recording sessions and base some of the "body language" off of the actor, which ends up adding to the finished look.
perhaps you could do some simple test animations, you know low quality, every Xth frame, even wireframe to show them while they record the dialogue, which will help them "get into it" more, and then you can watch them, go back and tweak the animation, do the sync and come out with a better product
but you already knew that, right? 
later
Tom
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What everyone seems to forget is that once we look past race, religion, gender, and all that, everyone on this planet is first and foremost...
...a PERSON
from what i've seen and experienced myself (i did a few voices for a student film), voices come first. the animator(s) need to sync their animations. it's easier, because the animator will watch a tape of the voice talent talking, giving them a reference, both of the shape of the mouth and of timing. it's practically impossible to create an animation before having voices. usually the talenthastotalkreallyfast, or theeyy'lll haaave tooo taallkk reaalllyyyyy sllooowwww to match the animation's movements.
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Monkey Sea Entertainment
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Moviemakers Portal (moviemaking-only search engine)
Yep, from all the "How they made it..." things the voice acting is done first. This also a reason why you want good actors, because the expressions they do while voice acting is a template for animating the characters.
I understand that the actors are recorded first, then you animate your puppets to match the sound. It would help to have some dope sheets. Dope sheets are (I think) preset mouth shapes used for reference.
Isaiah
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Isaiah, "Sound Guy" Eyre
www.iEyre.com
Voice first!
This is what I'd do.
Record your dialogue track either doing all the voices yourself or with as many other talents as you can persuade to come on board. How much time you want to devote to this is entirely up to you; the normal practice on animated theatrical features is to record each line separately, often with multiple takes for each line. It's not all that uncommon for an alternate take to be substituted for the dial that the charts (dope sheets, bar sheets, greys; they all refer to a frame by frame breakdown of the action/dial, traditionally prepared by the assistant director) are prepared from, after animation is completed.
When you've prepared your dial track (you might want to include some sound FX for pacing purposes) you're ready to start animating.
Once your masterpiece is complete, you can get your stars to recreate the dial track for you. ADR really isn't the near-impossible task that many people would have you believe. Every single line of dialogue in the movie Once Upon a Time in America was looped. For Greystoke, Andie MacDowell's voice was completely replaced by another actress (Glenn Close, I believe).
Animation dubbing doesn't have to sound as terrible as most of those Japanese shows do; If you have any Disney DVDs, they probably include foreign language soundtracks. Watch how well they match up!
Find some pictures of professional 3d character animators and you'll notice a tv next to their monitor. That's so they can watch facial movements during spoken words to match their characters lip movement to the lines. So they have to know the lines before hand. But if the speech didnt come first, how would you be able to time the actors speech to the character's?? When the actors are in reading lines, they dont watch the animation to try and match it.
Later,
Gr|fter
In Japan, the animation is done first and then the voices are recorded. Since they don't know exactly how the line is going to be delivered, the animators just make the mouth flap open and close for the length of time they thing it should be.
This is by no means the best way to do it, but this generic mouth movement makes the sync less critical.
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