Moho Forum

OK, this is open to anyone who can answer it. I am 10 minutes away from finishing my first-ever animated short. I need your help to do it.

Here is the problem:

1) How do I construct and use a switch folder in a 25 second cartoon to make a man's mouth say "K (like the letter). Kite!" And then "K" one last time. Papagayo is just not working for me right now - sitting there doing nothing - but Slow Tiger and Touched told me I could build a switch folder to make the mouth move. How do I do that, WHEN I HAVE ALREADY FINISHED ALL OTHER ANIMATION ON THIS CHARACTER? He moves his arms and floats off the screen, BUT I FORGOT HIS MOUTH SO IT IS CLOSED THRU THE ENTIRE THING. How to fix?

2) How do I get Papagayo to launch and act like any ordinary Windows program? I have tried other programs like InstantMusic to try and get around this but if I continue to run into problems I will record the audio downtown in editing and just synch the video to it. Any way to get Papa to work you guys know of? What am I doing wrong?

that's it - when these two issues are solved my first cartoon is finished and I will post it. Thanks again to everybody trying to fix this.

-Beautiful Day

I can understand you are frustrated but hear me out...

When you say Papagayo doesn't work, what do you mean?

Does it not launch? Does it not load a wav file? Do you know how it is suppose to work?

Papagayo is a stand alone application. It doesn't do anything except CREATE dat files that are IMPORTED into a switch layer in AS. You must have a switch layer in AS with all 10 mouth shapes that the dat files produced by papagayo will key.

You don't use a switch layer because papagayo isn't working... you have to have a switch layer with the phonemes to even use papagayo in the first place. Papagay works with switch layers in AS.

You say papagayo just "sits there"... and you want it to "work like any other application"... not sure what it isn't doing that you think it should.

If you look at the AS tutorials and help for switch layers it is clearly explained exactly how they work.

Switch layers are... simple... once you read how they work. They just contain 2 or more different layers of any type, image or vector, that can be "switched" in the time line. Not that hard to understand.

You must draw different mouth positions. There is no magic "make mouth talk" button. You must have different mouth positions for the phonemes that papagayo uses.

Quick overview:

In Papagayo open a wav file. Type in what is being said, click Phonetic Breakdown for the language you need, then adjust the keys produced then click Export Voice and save the dat file.

Go back to AS and load the dat file by selecting the switch layer with your mouth shapes/phonemes. Open the properties of the switch layer and click on the "Switch" tab. Click the "Source Data" button and select the dat file.

I don't like to say this really I don't... but... you need to read the manual. when I first started I read the help for AS and Papagayo, looked at the sample files and was lip syncing in a few minutes.

EDIT:
If papagayo doesn't open your wav file then find and download the free application called Audacity (google this. First link). Open the wav in Audacity and export to wav again. this should open in Papagayo.

-vern

>>You must draw different mouth positions. There is no magic "make mouth talk" button. You must have different mouth positions for the phonemes that papagayo uses.

Oh!

Well that explains it

No manual came with my Papagayo download, and I tried using Help several times, but I will look again and see if there is just something simple I missed.

The rest, you just took care of! ***thank you***

I really thought there was kind of a magic "make mouth talk" button... chalk that one up to N00000bpidity...

Hmm...

Are you sure there weren't any tutorials or help with Papagayo? Mine came with very useful help and tutorial files. Did you download one of the "custom" versions? Some people on the forum have been extending and modifying Papagayo since the source code is open and free. I don't know if those versions come with the help and tutorial files.

I see that there is a newer version than I have, on the Lost Marble site but I can't imagine they would have removed all the tutorials and help files.

You should check the installation folder where the Papagayo installation is. There should be a folder of tutorials and html help docs.

Here's a tip if you don't want to make your own mouth shapes; You can use the mouth images that come with Papagayo and place them as image layers in a switch or incorporate them into your own characters.

-vern

Hi Hey Vern - you are absolutely correct, Papagayo DID come with tutorials and a manual. They are in the C drive in Program Files, under their own name, just like ASP5's. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I'm going to work on mouths today and see what happens.

Isn't it great how we are able to animate our own cartoons now? It was unthinkable, impossible, only a few years ago. Now we can put our ideas and visions right down onto vectors instantly.

Sometimes when I look at my old animation books and see rows of smiling animators lined up in front of the studio together, like Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Sterling Stuveysant and others, I feel a little sad the old days of crazy nutjob friends sketching gags together before lunch are gone forever. But then I can meet guys like you, Touched, Slowtiger and so many others who are helping me, and it makes me feel better. We really live in amazing times.

Thanks again. If I run into another mud pit, I'll holler.

beautifuldaymonster wrote:Sometimes when I look at my old animation books and see rows of smiling animators lined up in front of the studio together, like Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Sterling Stuveysant and others, I feel a little sad the old days of crazy nutjob friends sketching gags together before lunch are gone forever.

I miss those days too, though I experienced them later and on a smaller scale. We had a very small studio over 10 years ago, and we had some adventures there, showing our work, going on extremely little sleep for deadlines (well, some things haven't changed), throwing in little jokes in the animation that no one would ever see. It was a volatile time, but I have some fond memories. Animation's still primarily a solitary discipline, but it's good to have a place to talk about it when you're not actually working.

Well even back then there weren't a lot of those types of studios. Today they exist but use different tools.

I am sure there are a ton of studios with the exact same kind of dynamic. I know of a handful of small animation studios myself in different parts of the world.

With the low cost of software there are probably more opportunities to become a part of that type of studio than in the past.

-vern

Hi guys, agreed on both counts. Maybe there will be virtual studios in the near future, with animators from different continents like all of us, working together on the same projects. The last animation I did, I was on the east coast in the U.S. and my animators were on the west coast. We would post key frames and in-betweening up on each other's sites for mutual approval and suggest changes over the phone and by email. Then the animators would perform the tasks and re-post the finished work on their site for me to watch and ok from the east coast. We actually got a 2-minute cartoon done that way. I look back at their mouths now and have a great deal more respect for the amount of sheer hard work animation is.

Their mouths were awesome. I'm not sure if they were using a software for those or not. The main guy used to work at UPA and Paramount doing Popeye cartoons, so probably not. I'm guessing he did it all by hand... and here I am struggling in my tiny studio. I feel like an amateur.

I AM one!!!! (But this is fun)