Beginning to lip sync + more anticipation

Now I've starting lip-syncing at the beginning and the end, i've haven't done the middle yet because a little more frames are needed and I need to make the movement look less robotic:

Breaking down

Breaking down the poses is basically adding frames in-between the keyframes so each one has a smooth arc of movement between them. Here was my first attempt:

New scene

I made a new scene for the rig. Instead of a table and chair I made a makeshift bar. Its just so we can see more of him and that brings the character out a little more, obviously the keyframes had to be redone but they followed a similar setting:

Here I added extra frames in between after looking at how maya smoothly animates the rig, making his hand warp through the bar multiple times! Now the hand takes a detour around the bar thanks to the inbetweens:

Inbetweening the keyframes

I added a couple of inbetweens into the keyframes this time. Mostly between the large pauses between each sentence of speech:

Less keyframes in 3D

I've simplified my set of keyframes in 3D and added the sound file in too:

3D keyframes first draft

I took the Eleven rig, added a simple table and box to sit on and then made the keyframes of my lipsync using my 2D draft as reference:

The playblast:

The Eleven Rig

This character rig is not mine, but it is perfect for our task of creating a 3D lip sync. The original rig comes from this link: http://elevenrig.blogspot.co.uk/

The Eleven rig take the form of the simple human character and is even more interactive than the zombie rig from Hotel Transylvania. It also has customization settings for gender, weight, muscle, hair etc.

I made a couple of renders testing posing and lighting: