Total Lip Sync – Masterclass for Feature Animation by Laurent Rossi

If your acting is solid but the mouth gives it away, this class fixes that gap. Laurent Rossi breaks down how to hear dialogue like a supervisor, place shapes with intent, and build motion that reads on camera in Maya. You will walk away with a reusable lip sync library and a polished dialogue test built on real phonemes, not guesswork.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Analyze accents, phrasing, breaths and intent before you key a single shape
• Place mouth shapes with correct timing and understand why that placement works
• Design clear, graphic and appealing mouth shapes for camera readability
• Build a feature-quality lip sync library with phonemes, variations and clean blends
• Animate mouth motion with phrasing, arcs, travel and core animation principles
• Review your own shots and give clear, actionable feedback like a lead

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic animation fundamentals – body mechanics, posing, timing, and familiarity with Maya or Blender interface
• Tools: Maya 2022 with AnimBot and Studio Library (Blender with equivalent library tool works too), Krita, SyncSketch, Wonderwell Leo or Jieun rig optional with class discount
• Hardware: PC capable of running Maya / Blender with smooth viewport playback, drawing tablet recommended for Krita draw-over work

📝 Description

Most animators jump straight to moving the jaw. Rossi stops you before that. You start by listening – really listening – to how people talk, mumble, shout, laugh and run out of breath. You learn what to listen for in dialogue analysis, how accents change the mouth, and how intent changes where you put your breakdowns.

Then comes the part everyone argues about: where do the shapes go? You get a straight answer with proof. Using the Jieun rig in Maya, Rossi shows his method for shape placement, why it reads better on screen, and why other approaches fall apart in close-ups. No myths, no because-I-said-so. Just timing you can test.

Looks matter too. Every frame is a little poster. You work on silhouette, rhythm and design of the mouth so each phoneme is clear and graphic from the camera angle. That means draw-overs in Krita, image-matching in 3D, and lots of training your eye to spot mushy, unclear shapes.

After that you build the thing that makes production life easier: your own library. How many shapes do you actually need? How do you sculpt variations without breaking consistency? How do you store them in Studio Library so they blend with proper travel and arcs? Rossi walks through his process from Missing Link, Entergalactic and Nimona-era work, adapted for you to reuse on any rig.

Finally you put it all together. You animate a full dialogue test with the Leo rig, from blocking to spline to polish, using your library like you would on a feature. Plus you learn how to review work – yours and other people’s – with a checklist, SyncSketch workflow, and notes that actually help instead of vague do-better comments.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• 3D and 2D animation students who want a structured way to learn lip sync they can revisit as they level up
• Working animators who feel lip sync is their weak spot and want better interpretation, timing and mouth appeal
• Animation professionals who want to build a consistent, production-ready facial library and handle phonetics, accents and design at feature standard

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Laurent Rossi is an Animation Supervisor at ILM, with 18 years across 2D, 3D and stop-motion. He is a Gobelins graduate who has worked at Illumination, LAIKA, DNEG and Studio AKA, picking up four Oscar-nominated films along the way.

He is known specifically for faces. He helped shape the facial animation libraries for Missing Link, Entergalactic and Nimona, and supervised the full facial library for That Christmas. His credits also include Despicable Me 2, Minions, Secret Life of Pets and Ron’s Gone Wrong. He teaches the way he leads – direct, practical, and focused on why choices work.

🏁 Final Result

• A reusable lip sync library of clean, appealing mouth shapes stored for fast use in any dialogue shot
• A polished dialogue test from blocking to spline to polish, animated with your library using provided or personal audio

📢 Guys, this is a Group Buy campaign, check the GBC forum thread to get access

You can find the course preview in the download section below.