Lip Sync

For the lip sync I had no video reference from the film that the dialogue was located. The camera cuts off the speaker so I had to video myself speaking the lines for 11 seconds. I took the important parts of the dialogue and froze the frames so I could get an idea as to what I would need to do in order to recreate this 11 second sound clip in an animated rig.

During the recording I noticed several things about how the lips presented speech, also how the jawline was affected and how to present this on a character.
The first thing to notice is how wide the lips become when pronouncing different syllables - think 'O'. An 'o' would bring the lips closer and lower the jaw line, as presented in the bottom picture (I tried outlining the lip shapes with a red marker). 'E' would elongate the lips and raise the jawline.
'M' would close the mouth, and elongate the lips whilst bringing them in slightly. Also at the point where my character says 'alright', I discovered that when acting it out one side of the mouth was raised and a cheesy grin followed. I felt if I naturally acted smug at this moment then I needed to present it in the animation.
After completing this 11 second video I came to the conclusion that lip syncing came down to a few things, one being the jaw dropping and raising, another being the length of the lips and the final thing being the shape of the lips upon certain letters.
However this did not mean other facial features are not vital to create a realistic animation - as you can notice from the shots I took eyebrows were massively important and eyes were critical to make the face appear alive.