Help Constructing and Drawing Mouths (not a lip-synch question)

Anyhow!, all that junk here before was due some spammers I was just jabbering at. ;) Fyi!

What...??? Anyway, your first post, do some lip sync and a link post to it.
( I mean drawnings not lip sync)

ecec

Get a mirror. Do some life drawing studies of people's faces. Get on Amazon and find facial expression books, many of the ones I've seen are extremely insightful and the photographed expressions very imaginative.

I myself find the mouth to be a very expressive thing, next in line to the eyes. I don't feel like there's really a "theory" to mouths and lipsync, save for visimes or phenomes of standard mouth shapes. And these don't seem to fit all cases. I end up using some pretty wild shapes for a redneck character I animate. It's mostly observation and creativity.

But, geez, if anybody had /anything/ else to contribute on the subject, anything about lips, chins, teeth, noses -- just, I dunno, little bits of logic?

Hey, I got a little bit of logic...

#1. Think of the teeth as non-stretchable, solid objects. The lips and jaw do most of the moving, not the teeth. I had a lot of trouble with this once when I was animating a character with fangs. The fangs kept moving around every time he opened his mouth, and I had a terrible time editing out the mistakes once I found them.

#2. When a mouth opens, only the lower jaw moves (bringing the lower teeth down with it, of course). The upper jaw is steady most of the time, along with the rest of the skull. Also, when the jaw opens, the cheeks stretch over the sides of the jaws, so you can't see the molars or teeth further back.

#3. When you pull the corners of an open mouth up, the top teeth show. When you pull the corners of an open mouth down, the bottom teeth show. Try it in the mirror.

#4. Lips are incredibly flexible (perhaps one of the most flexible parts of the human face). For expressions, they can be very versatile. But in lip synching, they don't really move that much, except on accented syllables.

#5. And lastly, the corners of the mouth crease inwards as they are pulled further away from eachother. So, for puckered lips there are no creases at the corners of the mouth. But for a wide grin, the creases are deepened considerably.

There's my two cents... Take it for what it's worth. Everyone's face is different, though, so I don't know how accurate these tips are. You'll probably learn just as much, or even more by observing your own face in the mirror, and watching people's mouths when they talk.

I hope this was helpful,
Pooryorik

But to get to the point of this thread...
I have a devil of a time drawing mouths. I don't mean the simple stuff like a gaping Muppet-smile or a simple u-for-a-smile, n-for-a-frown. Again, it goes back to constructing more substantial Jones/Clampett/Avery/Kricfalusi-like faces. I've been watching so many cartoons over the past few days, trying to get some idea of what I can only guess is called "mouth theory". I thought I hit onto something important when it seemed like the corner of the mouth, where the two lips meet, is the key to the look - and, from what I can tell, it is. With a smile, the corner is always high - and with a frown, it's always low, and when a character has an expression of shock or extreme anger the 'corner' tends to be stretched into a much softer angle from the top lip to the bottom. But maybe there are exceptions to this?, maybe I'm missing something?, maybe that's an utterly over-simplified and superficial interpretation and someone needs to beat the real essence of the matter through my skull?

But, geez, if anybody had /anything/ else to contribute on the subject,

Thanks again. :)

I don't think you are missing anything, you are training yourself to see, your mouth observations are spot on. But don't get totally tied to them some characters just beg to break all the rules.

You should have more confidence in your work, you are doing great. And Orik's observations are great also.