I'm wondering if some sort of mouth animation as seen in characters in, say, South Park, might provide an effective alternative to using servos to manufacture jaw movement. And more servos to manipulate physical mouth movement.

So, I've just started looking around and am finding websites that claim that there are only 9 or 10 mouth (3D) "phenome mouth shapes".

3D mouth shapes

I'm looking for 2D shapes that might be displayed on a humanoid head that will reasonably substitute for phisical jaw and lip movements. I don't watch South Park unless socially pressured to do so, but from what I've seen, there can't be too many 2D phenome mouth shapes. (I believe this is called Lip-Sync.)

Will let you know what I find. Anybody out there have experience in this?

Ron