I have question about drawing and animating in anime studio

[jackass]

I have drawn front view, side view, 3/4view, and back view. Now I can animate anyway I want or do have draw more poses.

[Imago]

The number of poses depends by what you will make...
For example, if your character goes to a disco, he will dance... If he goes to a pub, he will sit and drink beer...
But if your project isn't too "complicated" the poses you made will be enough.

[slowtiger]

It all depends on how much movement and which kind of movement you're going to do.

A "standard" rig like yours will have front, side, and 3/4 view, it will have moveable arms and legs (which will bend properly), it will have mouth poses and moveable eyes and maybe even switchable hands. Whith this you can already go pretty far in animation. I'd say this covers 80% of a standard series.

However, each story will reach a point where you need something more individual. The "front view" isn't enough to make a character walk nicely towards you, maybe you need a handful more leg poses here. Maybe you need a "back view" too. Arms - in my experience you will create lots and lots of special arms, because your standard rig is too restricted in terms of emotion.

Keep your first rig as a separate file to always return to. Add additional poses (mostly for separate body parts) wherever you need them. After the first episode is finished, you may revise your model and decide which additional poses will be a permanent part of your character, and create a "template rig v1.1".

[Acochran_89]

definitely agree with slow on this one...

that is what i generally do with my characters. I create the basic view and poses, then depending on the story add the more "Involved" poses.

[Finkdaddy]

I have a slightly related question;

Do you put all of the alternate views and such in the same project and then just hide the layers, or do you save it somewhere else and bring it in somehow?

[Acochran_89]

i personally am a huge fan of switch layers.

I keep all my different poses ( views, hand positions, facial expressions, ect)
all in switch layers. something like this

MAIN SWITCH LAYER
---3/4 SWITCH LAYER
---FRONT SWITCH LAYER
---SIDE SWITCH LAYER
ect...

then in each of those i have something like this

ARM SWITCH LAYER
---arm
---hand switch layer
TORSO
HEAD GROUP LAYER
---FACE SWITCH LAYER
---HEAD
and so on and so forth...

sorry if that seems confusing...i can post a file if that's not clear.

Switch layers are a great way to have several different key poses for one character in on .anime file.

[Mikdog]

I'm also a fan of switch layers. They're one of Anime Studio's strengths I believe. Once you figure out how they work you'll be like 'this is AWESOME'.

If I can give a brief description of what they do, a switch layer is a folder that will only display ONE layer or folder at a time. Thus you can have multiple views all in group folders, or bones, or layers within a switch layer. Then, along a timeline, you can dictate which of those views you'd like to show. So, perhaps at 10 frames you want to show a front view, then at 20 frames you want to switch to a 3/4 view.

This makes life easier than setting visibility on or off for one layer and making sure that the next layer is turned on and invisible prior to the other layer being invisible...etc...

Switch layers are good for mouth positions, hand positions, eyebrows...really anything that 'switches'.

Instead of turning an object's visibility off when its needed I often use a switch layer with 2 layers inside it: for example 'LIGHT BULB ON' and then another empty vector layer called 'OFF' so I can easily right-click the switch layer at the time needed and switch the light OFF.

The light could be anything, like writing, a ball, some cheese, etc...

[Finkdaddy]

Thanks guys! I will play around with that and let you know how it turns out.

[Acochran_89]

Awesome! Good luck and be prepared to have your life as an AS user changed forever