Moho Forum

I am the mother of a 9 year old who loves Anime Studio. We work on Macs and just got the fix for quitting. That led us to this site and now we are thrilled to have a place to ask questions.

So...how do you add bones to a picture or drawing or anything else?

That's a REALLY broad question. I'd suggest doing the tutorials found in the help first.

OK, you'll need to work through tutorials 1.4, 3.1 and 3.2 for this.

1.4 will tell you how to arrange layers into a bone layer and how to draw bones.

3.1 will tell you how to bind several images to separate bones, like a puppet. 3.2 tells you how to use just one image and distort it with bones, like a piece of rubber sheet.

A 9 year old? That's tough, but not impossible. Even younger children can get an idea of animation, we do workshops regularly here in germany. With a bit of help for the technical stuff it should work.

Thank you both! He actually taught himself how to do some of the animation and has made some short videos and burned them to DVD. He just taught himself how to add sound and is having a great time. We enrolled him in cartoon camp this summer and he came home and said "the computer animation is lame" I suppose I have my hands full...He wants Motion but at $2.00 per week allowance he is a long way away...

carynjac wrote:Thank you both! He actually taught himself how to do some of the animation and has made some short videos and burned them to DVD. He just taught himself how to add sound and is having a great time. We enrolled him in cartoon camp this summer and he came home and said "the computer animation is lame" I suppose I have my hands full...He wants Motion but at $2.00 per week allowance he is a long way away...

Okay people! A nine year old... Yeeehaaaa!

I won't feel so bad now when I tell people to read the manual or when I say "it's so easy a small child could do it!"



-vern

Hi,
This is David the 9 year old. If you make each layer have a bone attach to it then can you control that single layer? Like you can make one layer an arm and another layer a head etc..

David

PS After camp today I am going to try the tutorials.

Hi David, (and welcome to the forum)

yes, that 's correct. One bone for each image of a body part makes your character move like a puppet. It is a bit difficult to get this result, you have to look for some things:

1. Check if you are in frame zero in the timeline. This is important for everything related to building characters.

2. Image layers must be inside the bone layer, like in the tutorial. Grab that image layer and move it over the bone layer until the bone layer turns red, then release it - done.

3. There's a sequence to bind a layer to a bone which must be followed:
- select the "bind layer" tool (icon: bone on paper),
- select the image layer,
- click the bone you want to bind the image to (it turns red),
- press space.

The "press space" is important, you'll need it often in the program to make any change permanent.

You can check if your binding is correct with the "manipulate bones" tool (Z, bone with two arrows).

You go David!
It's good to read about young guys like you interested in AS!

All the best,
Gustavo

And don't forget about the AS book over at amazon.com

Welcome to the community, David. Good to see young people getting in to the whole creative thing rather than waiting to see what TV is going to feed them next. Looking forward to seeing your first animation!!

I just got the Anime Studio book from Amazon and it's REALLY good. Between the tutorials, the book and all of the old fogies on this forum you'll be set.

For the record, people, I count myself as one of the aforementioned fogies.

Slowtiger,
I got it to work just like you said!...

Thans for the info on the book. my mom is going to get me the book. I made a few animations, how do I show them to you all???

David

I'm glad it works. Nothing is more frustrating than not getting the result one expects ...

In order to show your animation, you need to upload it to some webspace. Then you can write the link to that file on its webserver in a posting here. If you make a video file, you could upload it to youtube.com. If you want to post an Anime Studio File, it gets more complicated. I think the video is a better idea for a start.

I think you should first check with your mother (cool mother!) how to set up an account at youtube.

Youtube is the best bet in my humble opinion for video. It's very easy and free, no popup ads.

Another option would be to check with whoever you are getting your internet connection from. If you are on cable or verizon dsl or whatever, often you get a "home" page with a little bit of space for uploading stuff. I know loads of people with that space they never use (I have that space and don't use it).

Probably couldn't put much video on that space but you could put AS files there. They are quite small (unless you use a lot of big image layers).

-vern

Okay here is my first movie in 4 parts, I did it a few days ago. It's called Lenny the movie

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgeFpVSp-6s

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gy1YoLqIts

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sdRmJJQgGM

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCqdNjj2aSI

Very good! It is a demonstration of fresh and imaginative animation with the built in characters!!
The rocket one made me laugh!