What approach do you use for characters in a series?

[strider2000]

What you could also try is to animate a riddle.

That's a great idea. Thanks ernpchan

As I've been thinking about some of the ideas here, such as "plan before you rig" in contrast with "don't over design", I was struck by the concept of "specific design" vs "generic design". I think the essence of the advice I'm seeing is, "You cannot really design generically". I don't know if that conveys well what I'm thinking, but my thought is that while one can do a character design (and model sheet for example) that has no specific animation in mind, it's not very easy to extend that to designing rigs. Designing rigs often requires thinking of the specific animation you want to do. Yes there are pretty standard rigs that will work well for basic movement, such as talking and walking, but trying to design a super rig that will fit any situation will probably lead to over design (because it's not truly 3D). In many cases you'll just need to draw on model in what ever way works best for the segment.

Two simple examples I can think of are hands and feet. I've seen interesting videos that animate hand movement, but I currently just use switch layers. That seems to work well and may be best, because it's pretty easy to just draw a new hand position if I need one, but constructing a rig that would animate all possible hand positions (using only 2D) seems close to impossible (or at least very very time consuming). For feet I've used boned to turn them, like Scarlet Riggs and there are only some situations where it's difficult, but maybe it's even easier just to use switch layers, because there's typically not a need to animate in-betweens for the feet.

Anyway those are some of my thoughts based on the feedback I'm seeing. As always thanks for the advice.

[ernpchan]

I would actually disagree that you can't design generically. A decent rig will cover, and it should, all the basics. Now, yes, if you need something really specific that's when you have to do something custom. But how often is that going to come up in the production process?

This isn't necessarily the fun part, but going over the minutia of what your project is before you even put pencil to paper, vector shape on canvas or polygon in 3d space goes a long way in properly setting up and planning your execution.

Is the animation really dynamic or just a bunch of talking heads?
Is the animation super squash and stretchy or really rigid?
Even lip sync, we going with limited drawings and going anime style or do you want a lot of detailed enunciation?

One thing about animation that is more rigged based and less FBF is that what you can accomplish is certainly dictated by what you build. Coming from a lot of experience with 3d, I hear a lot of "The rig can't do that." or "The model can't do that."

So what you can accomplish is certainly constrained but you could look at it as a challenge. How can I tell my story with these pieces?

[strider2000]

I would actually disagree that you can't design generically.

That's exactly why I'm asking these questions and putting out my ideas. To get insight from those who have done a lot of this type of work. I'm still wet behind the ears

So what you can accomplish is certainly constrained but you could look at it as a challenge. How can I tell my story with these pieces?

As I think about it, though hand drawn animation is so much more time consuming, in some ways it's, at least conceptually for me, easier, because you can draw whatever you want. This makes me think it would be good for me to spend more time just taking existing rigs, like even the character wizard rigs and sample ASP rigs, and just try to animate short segments. Not necessarily to create my stories, but to practice animating life breathing elements of stories with rigs and ASP tools. To this point I've focused more on creating my own characters than mastering how to animate with rigs I might consider constrained. By just taking something that exists and practicing animation principles themselves I think I can learn how to better work with through those challenges, as you mention. I think I'll also learn what is a constraint and what just points to a different approach.

[ernpchan]

As I think about it, though hand drawn animation is so much more time consuming, in some ways it's, at least conceptually for me, easier, because you can draw whatever you want. This makes me think it would be good for me to spend more time just taking existing rigs, like even the character wizard rigs and sample ASP rigs, and just try to animate short segments. Not necessarily to create my stories, but to practice animating life breathing elements of stories with rigs and ASP tools. To this point I've focused more on creating my own characters than mastering how to animate with rigs I might consider constrained. By just taking something that exists and practicing animation principles themselves I think I can learn how to better work with through those challenges, as you mention. I think I'll also learn what is a constraint and what just points to a different approach.

Yes, FBF is time consuming. It also adds steps to the production process. Draw, cleanup, ink and color. Doing rigs in ASP, Flash or Harmony lets you skip those steps. The trade off is that your animation might look very computer generated and not organic. Again, it'll depend on what your ultimate creative goal is. A lot of asian studios still put pencil to paper. Either for creative choice or just because the migration to technology just hasn't been necessary, in their eyes, or the reluctance to embrace a new way of doing things.

If your goal is to be a generalist where you can do everything then it's just the process of going through and experiencing every step. If your goal is to just focus on one area, say animation, then just load up an existing rig and master that. Even if you want to just focus on one area, it'd still benefit you to still attempt the other areas of the process. This way you have some understanding of how each step affects the other.

[Greenlaw]

Hi Strider2000,

Thank you for the nice comments!

So a couple of quick question for you.
1) For your 3D animations, like "Happy Box", when you create another movie, with the same characters, you don't create them from scratch again do you? I expect not, so I'm thinking a bit that way for my 2D stuff. Sketching something on paper is easy for me. Quality drawing is longer, vector drawing is longer and character rigging even longer. So, for me, in my mind my 2D rigs are similar to 3D models in the sense that I'm willing to invest more in construction so that they can be reused.

Now make way for another one of my exercises in verbosity.

Yes, the Happy Box characters were designed with re-usability in mind. For 'B2', we added fur (obviously) and came up with a slightly different system for the mouth animation, both of which required modifications to the geometry and rig. But for the most part we were able to re-purpose our setups from Happy Box. If we ever get around to creating that episodic 3D Brudders series, I think I’d like to improve the animation/mocap controls over what we’re using now, but the general setups will probably still be based on what we developed in these two films.

You right in thinking that 2D character rigs are analogous to 3D rigs, especially in terms of Anime Studio. When I’m developing one of our projects for ASP, I approach design and rigging the same way I would for a 3D character: with ease of use and a broad range of adaptability in mind. It’s one of the reasons why I like using this program.

However, no matter how well you prepare, sooner or later you’re going to run into a situation where an established rig just won’t do and you're going to need to create a ‘special’ to do that one crazy thing your character will probably never be required to perform again. That’s where understanding a variety of rigging techniques can really pay off.

This is why the preproduction phase is so important. It’s the time to figure out how you will meet the challenges laid out in your storyboard...or, if editing the storyboard is permissible, you can simply change your story to minimize or avoid the difficulties altogether. If you try to change designs and methodology in the middle of production, you risk missing deadlines or even derailing the project completely. Try to get it all nailed down in preproduction.

2) In Scareplane was most of the 2D stuff frame by frame work? I think it's Ratatoullie (sorry if that name or spelling is wrong that flips up the seats. I can see that might be a rig that could easily be used again (with perhaps exception of the outfit) but I can see how much of the work is unique to the action going on. Would you reuse any of the characters from that one?

Yes, that’s the correct way to spell Toullie’s full name. It’s also an incorrect spelling for the Italian dish. We didn’t know how to spell the food when we named him but we decided to stick with it. Trivia: Some people think we named Toullie after the movie Ratatouille, but he was born two years before that movie came out and he was actually named after the character Ratatooey from the 1983’s Twice Upon a Time. (Sigh! This wonderfully quirky animated film is so hard to see anywhere nowadays.) But I digress...

Scareplane was another ‘learning’ project for us. I did all the drawing and animation and Alisa painted all the backgrounds. I actually knew very little about Anime Studio when we started this film so there’s a mish-mash of techniques used throughout the film. For the most part, I was able to re-purpose certain rigs across many scenes but there are also more ‘specials’ being used than I intended to create when I storyboarded the short. If I were to make this film again with the knowledge I have now, I would plan scenes more carefully and further economize the setups before we began the animation phase. Which means this project served its purpose perfectly!

For most of the production, there were two rigs for each character, a front view rig and a side view rig. You'll see three quarter view of Toullie but this was mainly a side view rig with a slightly modified front view head pasted on. I didn't worry about transitional front-to-side rigs because the characters never do that in this film. That was a conscious decision because I wasn't ready to deal with that level of complexity yet.

(Sidenote: when we produced the HLF titles animation later that year, we created rigs could turn from left-to-right 3/4 views, plus separate side view-only rigs for all the main characters. This approach was perfect for this project because the characters are almost always in 3/4 view except when they are running. Since we were more knowledgeable about ASP during preproduction this time around, fewer 'specials' needed after we got into the animation phase. Now back to Scareplane...)

Sister's first scene in Scareplane was not only the first scene animated, it probably the most complicated one. It was planned that way because I felt if I could figure this one out using ASP then animating the rest of the show should be much easier. What made the scene difficult was Sister’s transition from sitting to standing, and how the hands, arms, legs, the seat belt and buckle needed to change stacking order several times. I wound up using a mixture of different bones rigs with some manually keyframed point animation. There were couple of false starts with this setup but I think the experience taught me almost everything I needed to know for finishing the rest of the show. I was even able to re-purpose parts of this setup for Sister’s two other 'front view' scenes.

There were two scene that might crudely be considered frame-by-frame animation: the one with Sister tumbling toward the cockpit door and Sergeant tumbling out of his seat. I meant to draw more frames for these animations to make them smoother but FBF drawing in ASP 9.5 was too tedious and I was running out of time. (The schedule may have been self-imposed but we tried to stick to it like it was a job.) FYI, ASP 11 introduced frame-by-frame drawing and animation tools that should make creating scenes like these a lot easier now.

As for adapting the artwork and rigs from Scareplane to a episodic series format, that might not be practical. These rigs were designed to solve very specific problems. For example, Sister’s front view setup is complicated and specifically tailored for doing exactly what she does in the film (stand up and tumble forward,) and it’s not very usable for many 'normal' actions. The cats had very simple rigs...but they are probably too simple to be used in a general production. This is because the storyboard was purposely conceived with minimal actions that exploited nearly every rigging and animation feature in ASP. I thought this approach would help us to become familiar with ASP's tools and workflow quickly without getting too hung up on story complications. Besides, at the time we only wanted to see what it was like to create one production with ASP--using it to make an on-going series of animations wasn't really on our radar yet. (Baby steps.)

Now that Alisa and I have gone through the whole process for two very different productions, I think it will be relatively easy for us to figure out the setups needed for creating an episodic series. We would first examine the issues that slowed us down during the other productions and consider alternative solutions for the new one. Like making rigs that are consistent and more generalized but also more adaptable to special situations; making line weights in the artwork more constant (but I think we can still keep the tapered ends as a Style properly); and widespread usage of the Styles panel--once you understand how this feature works, it can be a major time saver. (I just wish project specific Styles could be saved as file and be more easily referenced in new scenes.)

That was probably a lot more answer than you were asking for but I hope it was interesting.

G.

[strider2000]

Thanks for the great answers! It's all very interesting and helpful. If I could just do this all day that would be great

If your goal is to be a generalist where you can do everything then it's just the process of going through and experiencing every step.

I'm the only one involved in my work, so generalist it is, but fortunately that's very appealing to me. There's just sooooo much to learn That's expected, but it really is great to have such a wonderful community of people sharing their insights from their experiences. Thanks!

That was probably a lot more answer than you were asking for but I hope it was interesting.

Very interesting and very much appreciated! A lot of the things I've learned so far, from webinars etc, have gotten me to the point that I can do simple animations and basic mechanics. I can get animations done, but they're less full of life than I like

Your feedback is extremely helpful, because it goes beyond single actions and helps me see and think about in a larger sense. Also as people share their approaches it makes me realize ... "Hey I never even tried that tool." and opens another area to learn.

What made the scene difficult was Sister’s transition from sitting to standing, and how the hands, arms, legs, the seat belt and buckle needed to change stacking order several times. I wound up using a mixture of different bones rigs with some manually keyframed point animation.

Yeah that makes perfect sense. I wonder if you'd do it frame by frame if you did it over in ASP11 (much better tools for that now).

You'll see three quarter view of Toullie but this was mainly a side view rig with a slightly modified front view head pasted on. I didn't worry about transitional front-to-side rigs because the characters never do that in this film.

Yes, right now it seems to me that many of the rigs would benefit from a left 3/4 to right 3/4 head turn, even if the body is static.

Well, got to run to dinner (the dinner bell just rang ) Thanks again for sharing. I'll be digesting them for quite a bit

[ernpchan]

I'm the only one involved in my work, so generalist it is, but fortunately that's very appealing to me. There's just sooooo much to learn That's expected, but it really is great to have such a wonderful community of people sharing their insights from their experiences. Thanks!

I would suggest doing a project that's small in scope before trying to make your opus. Make a basic stick figure, mitten hands, eyes and mouth. Don't even bother with a nose. Then a simple animation like running and jumping over something.

This'll give you a good introduction as to what's involved to just get that done. From there you can build up to more complicated things. If you do too much at once you'll get overwhelmed with having too many things that need to be solved. And instead of creating something nice and polished you'll just have a bunch of work that's mediocre and it'll taint your view of the process.

[strider2000]

I would suggest doing a project that's small in scope before trying to make your opus. Make a basic stick figure, mitten hands, eyes and mouth. Don't even bother with a nose.

Yeah I've got a gesture man and a stick man with mitten hands. You read my mind


I've also done a number of small animations, just wanting to get better and learn from others. This is perhaps one of my most complex ones so far.

[Greenlaw]

That was pretty funny!

G.

[strider2000]

That was pretty funny!

Thanks. I still have lots to learn, but it was fun and challenging

[GCharb]

Heheh, I like it, very energetic, good work!