Moho Forum

Hello,

How do I add bones and animate a character which is already sketched fully. Like I want this character to walk, blink, run, jump everything but although I'm imported it into anime studio and tried doing the same, I couldn't set up bones or move parts of this character.

Also, I saved this character as PNG from photoshop.

One more Query: I don't want to create this same drawing again and again for the whole animation for different poses. I just want to draw it once and use it in various poses throughout the film. Is that possible? If so how? Where can i find tutorial for the same.

You can find the link to the character here:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/ap/bom10110211706.widec.jpg

That's going to be a tough character to animate as an image. Your best bet is to use the image as a reference layer and re-create the body parts as shapes in Anime Studio. Then you can rig the shapes with bones like I did in the three tutorials starting here: http://fiziwig.com/anim/index02.php

--gary

My first choice would be Fiziwig's response, learn the AS drawing tools and create the character in AS.

Having said that there are ways to use images to create characters. You won't get the full smooth range of motion you get using vectors but it will still work to a degree.

You need to chop the character up into pieces. In your example the character is a 3/4 view. You would need to have individual layers controlled by bones. limbs not visible in the illustration (hidden by perspective) would need to be on separate layers underneath other layers. The head and face would probably best be handled using multiple expressions/positions in a switch layer.

The bending of arms and legs (elbow and knee) could be achieved using "image warping". Use flexible binding to get smooth image warping. This would probably be the only place to use image warping. Everything else would use layer binding.

You would use bone offset (look in the help/tutorials) to "assemble" the final character on frame 0.

-vern