SAT-1 (Short Animation Test)

[FCSnow]

This is a test for my next cartoon; "Pascal's Casino". The character is called the "Dealer".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY4l8h2N ... ideo_title

I used a slightly different bone setup to give here more flexibility.
I also added more mouth movements in an effort to cover areas I thought were missing in lip syncing.

I hope to have the whole cartoon finished by the end of the year.

Floyd

[jonbo]

Nice character, but creepy female "Steve Hawking" voice.

[GCharb]

Yeah, lovely character, but darn the voice is bad!

There are plenty of synth voices, I like Ivona, but there are some decent free ones as well.

http://www.ivona.com/

[FCSnow]

jonbo wrote:
Nice character, but creepy female "Steve Hawking" voice.

and

GCharb wrote:
Yeah, lovely character, but darn the voice is bad!

There are plenty of synth voices, I like Ivona, but there are some decent free ones as well.

Actually, I don't entend to use that voice. It's just there to test the lip sync. I have a real person lined up to do the the voice, plus a back up. A back up is a good thing to have.

I use the computer voice just to kry thing out. Sometimes hearing the dialogue is better than just reading it a hundred times

Floyd

[neeters_guy]

Lovely character and she seems to deform well in your test, the shoulders especially. If you have the time, it would great to see a screen shot of the bone set up or maybe a quick explanation.

Your work has really improved from your earlier works on your youtube channel.

Looking forward to the finished piece with the actual voices.

[GCharb]

I second that!

[FCSnow]

I wish I had the means to post a screen shot of the bone setup, but unfortunetly I can. The computer I use for animation is not the one I use for the internet. The internet one is subject to lockups and crashes. I can only use it when the thing is consciene and lucid. It is one of the reason I haven't been posting much on the forum.

That being said, I try to explain what I did with the bones.

Almost every character I've seen, using Anime Studio, uses a single bone for the spine and one for the neck. For basic characters that don't have to look realistic, it's good enough.

But I wanted more flexibility in this character. So I thought about our own spines and how they are made up many small bones connected to each other. But to use that many bones in a animated character would make it uncontrollable. So, I limited the number to three of equal lenghts. I also limited how far the bone could move to about 10 degrees in either direction. This would be the same as a single bone with 30 degrees of limit, only the spine would look more curved. I could have added one or two more bones, but I don't think it would've added more to the look. And with more bones, control becomes a problem.

As for the shoulders, again I patterned it after the human body. I added two Clavicle bones between the spine and the shoulder joints.

Another thing to keep in mind is to limit the bone influence just to the edge of the drawing. any more or less could cause distortion or interfer with the drawing controled by other bones.

Some of you may be wondering, "Where is the parent bone?" In this case it is the hips. Since there are no legs, it's just one single bone at the base.

I hope this what you wanted to know.

Good luck with your own projects.

Floyd