Head Turn Test

[Markster]

Now that I have smart bones I tested how good it would work for a simple head turn.



It's not a good animation or drawing, it's just a test for a head turning animation.

Made in Anime Studio Pro 9.5 and Vegas Movie Studio HD 11.

[Lukas]

...o...k?

Try animating the meat-mass and the shape of the eyes

[Danimal]

Just from the preview image YouTube is showing, you can already see that the head doesn't turn so much as the face just sort of slides over. It kind of has a disturbing effect, in fact.

[Markster]

Of course it's not a good animation people, it's just a test animation for smart bone control levers, I only spent a few minutes animating him.

It's not a good animation or drawing, it's just a test for a head turning animation.

Thanks for being honest, it helps me get better.

[EHEBrandon]

Ehhhh I have to agree drawing and animation is not good... At all.. But it is a test over... I am guessing you are just doing a quick test to see how smart bones do turns over all? Personally I recommend doing point by point animation. By moving all the vectors over for each time you want something to turn... Personally I think bones dont look good with turns or legs... Arms and basic head movements and basic body movements yes its awesome... But I recommend moving point by point.. You could also set up a smart bone to move all the points to a certain degree so you don't have to keep doing it over and over... Also with animation I don't recommend using the same file.. Usually I break each seen into different files and then combine them in a video editor like Sony Vegas or After Effects... You could easily do that by storyboard.

Here is a example of one of my head turns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGZfxB1J0-4

Ignore the shading I was not focusing on detail to much or character design but mostly animation. I have one other head turn test but that's because the points got messy due to me being unorganized with layers and where things were. So if you use this method make sure you keep a track of where you vectors go... But if you need example files I don't mind uploading them for you.

[neeters_guy]

If you don't have well thought out drawings to target, smart bones won't help much. Read this old but one of best threads on head turns: How I can make head turn + Talking mouth + moving eyes? @.@
Pay particular attention to slowtiger's advice regarding "linear inbetweens" and importance of correct perspective.

Keep in mind that this is a difficult skill to master in traditional animation. Most slow head turn look odd; it's almost always better to do it fast...2 or 3 frames...and it's quite convincing.