Moho Forum

Hey folks -
I'm knocking my way through ASP for the first time. I've done several hours of general tutorials, I get the gist for starters and I'm ready to begin working on original ideas. I thought I'd toss this out here since I'm still in a heavy learning curve and potentially save myself hours of chasing bad ideas. I've chosen one of my drawings to start working with, but I have questions about the best way to draw this in the program:



I've read enough discussions to know that part of creating a reliable rig for animating is to draw with the fewest number of points possible. The legs/feet/toes will be pretty straightforward, but I'm wondering about the best way to draw the head. Something as simple as creating the "cut out" hole in the head isn't terribly straightforward. Simple circle, easy, adding the second dimensional curve with the add points tool distorts the original circle. Is this better approached via masking? I'd like to be able to adjust the angle of the cut through as the character moves horizontally.

Same with the open area at the back of the head. I'll have to animate the curvature at the back over horizontal movement. In the area with the concentric curve lines, would this work better animated as points on a layer or translated on its own layer altogether? Given some of the style details in this I thought I'd see if some of you veterans had any advice about how ASP might handle something like this best. It's a hell of a deal trying to break away from adobe mentality! Thanks very much!

Matt

You need to train yourself to think in closed shapes stacked on top of each other. I broke down your drawing like this:


As you see, each leg needs to be a complete shape. Each toe as well, I've indicated how large they should be. The head can be easily split into three shapes. The front is easy, you may make the nose a seperate shape as well (read up about switching off line segments). The back of the head is just a coloured shape with some parallel black lines on top of it.

I think this will work well with just 4 layers:
- bone layer
- - head front
- - leg 1
- - leg 2
- - head back

Thanks a million slowtiger - this is very helpful, I'll let you know how it goes. Cheers!

Interesting drawing. It'd be great if you could post it once in movement.

Thanks Nico, will do. Once it doesn't completely suck

Meandered my way through drawing, simple bone rig and basic animation, but I'll get the hang of it. Thanks again for the help, slowtiger. http://www.sastudios.com/images/Swimmer.mov

That's a fun character. Nice job animating it.

Slowtiger has the right idea, and nice job animating it, and welcome to the community!

It's funny how my brain works. The surreal body reminded me of russion animator Ivan Maximov, whereas the parallel lines made me think of japanese animator Yōji Kuri.

http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=I ... ff&tbm=vid

http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=Y ... ff&tbm=vid

Very nice. Inspiring thread altogether.

Thanks GCharb and Greenlaw, for the welcome and the encouragement, like any creative skill set it's just a long road isn't it?

slowtiger wrote:It's funny how my brain works. The surreal body reminded me of russion animator Ivan Maximov, whereas the parallel lines made me think of japanese animator Yōji Kuri

I wasn't familiar with either artist, slowtiger... Brilliant. Especially like Maximov's stuff. I have a ton of drawings in a similar vein to this swimmer, but many would present much greater challenges and frankly just may not be well suited to anything but frame by frame, which is another kettle of fish altogether of course. Inspiring links though... This stuff's a blast.