Trouble with an alligator mouth shapes

[alanm30801805]

Hello, I have this puppet I and the mouth shapes are confusing me. The puppet is an alligator at 3/4 (see video below)

What are the best practices to make his speech look natural? Is there a mode that would just have his jaw hinge at the corner? Notice the top jaw/face gets distorted alot, which we do not want. We want the mouth to open like a scissor or how a gators jaw would naturally open... 

I hired a freelancer to make this and this was his second revision... I don't think he is capable unfortunately.

I am learning as much as I can about CH but This is a point that I am stuck, Please help and thank you all in advance.

[alanm30801805]

could this be somthing as simple as adding a + to something so the face doesn't distort?

[alank99101739]

Hi Alan M, it's Alan K here...

There are two approaches I know of for mouths

- draw all the mouth positions by hand

- nutcracker jaw

the first will work, but you have to draw each mouth position one by one. Get get exact control this way though.

The second only supports direct up and down movement.

There is a jaw bone handle you could try - I've never used it myself. I am wondering if you can draw face with upper jaw, then a thin strip where the bottom jaw goes and put the jaw handle in it. Make that layer hidden. Then add the bottom jaw artwork (with a leading +) and attach it to the hidden strip. I will draw a diagram shortly.

[alank99101739]

Okay, not sure its what you want, but here is a very crude jaw puppet using nutcracker jaw. It has a rotation ability I did not realize (so it rotates the bottom jaw). Very crude, but might set you in the right direction?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11TJMotZHhY-Kjl0m7ThaFqgqcPXXR_CW/view?usp=sharing

[alanm30801805]

I think this may do the trick... So I would have just one single bottom jaw that is placed with the settings you mentioned above?

[alank99101739]

I have not used nutcracker jaw before - it was my understanding it only moved the bottom part of the mouth. https://www.okaysamurai.com/CHFAQ/ has a video on jaws that might help more. I only discovered jaws had "rotate" by accident when creating the little demo! So I *think* it will only move the bottom jaw, but I am not sure.

[alanm30801805]

thank you

[alanm30801805]

If I used just a single jaw image and moved it as you did in the example, could I then make the mouth shapes just the toungue that moves inside? Is that possible? Sorry for noob questions

[alank99101739]

To be honest, not sure. If you were going to draw mouth positions for the tongue, personally i would just draw the whole upper jaw, lower jaw, and tongue for each viseme (draw and replace it all). Then you have complete control. It may very well be possible to mix them, but I like keeping things simple (less likely to break!).

You can use Cycle layers if you need some in-between frames with mouth positions. Again, I cheat and don't bother - just showing the final mouth position.

[TheOriginalGC]

Something you might look into is the Cycle Animation behavior. I've used it with a robot to control the intensity of a light when the user speaks. You should be able to do the same thing with a few positions on your character's jaw. I want to do this with a character of mine, so I'll be interested in seeing how this turns out.