Duplicating a character

[Hans Rickheit]

This is probably an easy one, but is confounding me at the moment....

I'm in the middle of making a short simple cartoon featuring (relatively) popular characters from my comics, COCHLEA & EUSTACHIA. The characters are look-a-like girl twins.

In this cartoon, one of the girls walks (stage right) into the frame, hears a sounds, walks forward to an object on the floor. The object stops making noise. She bends down, and begins beating it with her fists.

Her twin, enters from the opposite side of the farm, observing her.

I had the false notion that by simply duplicating the first girl's Bone Layer, I would have a second character that could move independently. However, although another duplicate layer DOES appear with the girl on it (I am able to "flip" her horizontally so she can walk in from the other direction) her actions completely mimic the animation of the first character, in spite of my attempts to set keyframes for her. Also, I cannot figure out which actions are hers in the timeline below the screen.

How do I create an exact duplicate of the first character which I can manipulate independently?

[drumlug13]

If you copied the characters bone layer AFTER you already had created an animation for it, everything you animated (bones, points, switches etc) will also be copied to the new bone layer.

You can go to your top menu to clear it though. Animation> Clear Animation> From Layer .... Then it will ask if you want to clear the animation from the sub-layers. Say yes and it will create an exact copy.

[Hans Rickheit]

Excellent! Thank you so much for the help!!!!