Moho Forum

Hi, I'm setting up a new character for a shot where they walk into shot as a profile and quickly stop and turn to signal for other's behind them to follow. Firstly here's the sketch for the side view.



The thing that has been holding me up is that I feel I'm mean't to try and make a clever character turn, but is this really necessary? Is it an acceptable approach to just swap out the character at that point with one that is set up to turn into the next pose. I mean, animation is allowed to do that isn't it? so many things will look different in that next pose, the head, the torso the shape of the legs, I feel I'd be making it easier on myself treating the profile and frontal versions of this action as two separately rigged characters. Does this sound like a sound plan forward or is it a cop out?

The next pose will look something like this.

Is it an acceptable approach to just swap out the character at that point with one that is set up to turn into the next pose.

No. It's absolutely forbidden to not use a fully equipped rig with smartbones and dials and whistles and bells, even if you only need one shity little head turn, and the ghosts of Vern and Selgin will haunt you in your sleep if you do otherwise.

*coughs*

Use whatever works for you. I'd do that with only one inbetween in the turn, this can be done quite fast in a switch layer.

Ha ha ha ha, okay, so I'll do some looking into switch layers now. I think I'll survive the hauntings.

djwaterman wrote: Does this sound like a sound plan forward or is it a cop out?

It's the way cartoons were done for decades and decades. Not a cop out at all, and virtually without exception it'll look better anyway.

slowtiger wrote:No. It's absolutely forbidden to not use a fully equipped rig with smartbones and dials and whistles and bells, even if you only need one shity little head turn, and the ghosts of Vern and Selgin will haunt you in your sleep if you do otherwise.

Hehehe, exactly.

Anyway, if you are brave enough to make it simple, I recommend you to make a little anticipation before the switching. Then make the character react to that anticipation, that will keep the change smooth and will "hide" the abrupt switching. Put special atention to the arms and legs, make them follow the same "flow" during the change movement.

You may want to do a search on 'smears' -- especially if it's going to be a quick turn. This method was used a lot in analog animation and can save a bit of work. Not to mention it would irritate those spirits that must not be named.

I was reading this and remembered that a few years ago I'd experimented with doing a turn using just two character views. It does work if you follow what Selgin said and have good anticipation before the turn. I prefer 'snappy' to 'floaty' any day

Yes, do whatever it takes to get the shot done! Nobody cares so long as the results are engaging and tell the story the way you want to tell it.

In our recent short film 'Scareplane', there are a few scenes where I used 'still' drawings in Switch layers to create transitions between differently rigged drawings or to replace portions of rigged characters when the characters had to hit poses that were difficult or impossible to achieve using normal bones animation. These transitions were done using only a few drawings, sometimes as few as a single frame.

The last scene, for example, is just two drawings for the entire scene--the falling characters and the characters lying on the floor (with only one partially rigged character in the second drawing.) I originally meant to draw two or three transitional drawings between these two drawings but discovered that, in this case, I didn't need to insert any transitional drawings at all. I honestly can't call it was a 'cop out' when I'm perfectly happy with how it turned out.

G.

Greenlaw wrote:Yes, do whatever it takes to get the shot done! Nobody cares so long as the results are engaging and tell the story the way you want to tell it.

In our recent short film 'Scareplane', there are a few scenes where I used 'still' drawings in Switch layers to create transitions between differently rigged drawings or to replace portions of rigged characters when the characters had to hit poses that were difficult or impossible to achieve using normal bones animation. These transitions were done using only a few drawings, sometimes as few as a single frame.

The last scene, for example, is just two drawings for the entire scene--the falling characters and the characters lying on the floor (with only one partially rigged character in the second drawing.) I originally meant to draw two or three transitional drawings between these two drawings but discovered that, in this case, I didn't need to insert any transitional drawings at all. I honestly can't call it was a 'cop out' when I'm perfectly happy with how it turned out.

G.

Hi, I really liked your video. I love your description of how you made some parts with switch layers and different rigged characters.
Can you please make a video tutorial about your film on how you did it. It would be a great learning experience for all of us.

Sure. I was thinking of doing a walkthrough video for some of the trickier scenes. I'll post a link in the 'Scareplane' thread when it's ready.

To be honest though, I'm not really an expert at this yet--'Scareplane' was our first short film created with Anime Studio and I made a lot of mistakes getting through it. Hopefully, I won't be repeating many of those errors on our next project. If I can save another artist from making the same dumb errors, it will be worth making the video.

G.