Voices before or after?

[Roe-Sharp]

Should I animate the body movements and facial expressions before I get someone to do the voices?

I would think animating the body and expressions would be best so the voice actors would have an idea of what tone to use and what emphasis I want, but I'm not really sure.

How do you do it?

[BenKNG]

At 9/24/11 03:30 PM, Roe-Sharp wrote: Should I animate the body movements and facial expressions before I get someone to do the voices?

I would think animating the body and expressions would be best so the voice actors would have an idea of what tone to use and what emphasis I want, but I'm not really sure.

How do you do it?

Definitely before. The way the voice actors know what tone to use is soley the script. I wouldnt even do an animatic until i get the voices.

[SirAlex]

At 9/24/11 03:30 PM, Roe-Sharp wrote: Should I animate the body movements and facial expressions before I get someone to do the voices?

NO!!!!, the voices always go first If you make the body and heads first then you'll end up with bad timing of the voices( The mouth moving before the voice comes or vice versa )

I would think animating the body and expressions would be best so the voice actors would have an idea of what tone to use and what emphasis I want, but I'm not really sure.

Trust me no, you'll end up with a fucked up animation

How do you do it?

[BananasFoster]

Definitely what everyone else is saying!

I know in the professional world of animating, the voices are often done after the animation has been completed, but they have so much better equipment/training/voice actors/etc, they can get the timing just right and the voice actors can match the animation perfectly.

If you're doing amateur work (which is what I'm guessing since you are even asking this) it is a much better idea to gather voices first. That's how I do it myself, and it's much easier. Plus, sometimes while getting voices, new ideas or ways of expressing something come out in a way you wouldn't have considered before, or your voice actors say the lines in a different way that sounds better than you had initially come up with.

So basically just do voices first, animation after!

[Neo-Egyptian]

I work for Aardman and so I can say with some certainty it's definitely better to do the voices first and then animate second! However, with this said:

At 9/24/11 03:30 PM, Roe-Sharp wrote: I would think animating the body and expressions would be best so the voice actors would have an idea of what tone to use and what emphasis I want, but I'm not really sure.

Although the way you're suggesting doing this wouldn't work out particularly well, the idea behind it is pretty sound - instead of animating stuff to get across the tone and emphasis you want, simply explain what you want to the actor beforehand or, better yet, storyboard the scene to give a sense of movement and to clearly show the emotions of the characters. You can do a basic animatic or draw the key poses without needing to do any lip-sync, and these will help the voice actors with their work.