Lip syncing and facial expressions

Throughout the animating process I left the faces and mouths alone for the most part, getting the body language and actions finished first. Then made use of the Max rig's inbuilt facial camera view which positions the viewport camera directly on the face of the rig, allowing the user to manipulate the face. The first step was lip syncing and I made it a priority to complete the basic mouth movements first. I simply opened and closed the mouth to varying degrees in time with the words to get a basic lip sync down.

I then went back once all of the basic mouth movements were complete to add greater detail and definition to the words that were being said, for example pursing the lip when 'o' sounds were being spoken, such as 'do' or 'your'. Aside from this I changed the angle of the lips when certain hard 'T' or 'S' sounds were made.

Lastly I did a final facial pass for each rig altering the facial features in order to convey emotion, such as worry on the privates face when the officer gets annoyed with him, or the anger on the officers face when the privates admits to having no love for his king. Due to the Max rig's fairly simple controls this was merely a series of eye brow and cheek movements to convey the correct degree of each emotion, I also made use of the upper and lower eye lid controls for this purpose.