MikeMcGrane wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:48 pm
...what is best technique to get the moths to follow the character while it turns it head.
There are a couple of simple tricks I like to use for that.
The easiest way is to transform the mouth Switch layer, that is to slide it during the turn, and either squish it on x or rotate it on y. Rotating usually works better since you get more or of a perspective effect from it. Alternatively, you could consider using a mesh warp that affects all the appropriate layers inside your switch layer...but try the first two tricks first, as they require a lot less work.
To make the above look more convincing, you'll want to slide the tongue and teeth inside the mouth in the opposite direction to give the shapes internal perspective. This animation should be done inside the head turn Smart Bone Action, and you'll want to do this for every mouth shape drawing. That's not as much work as you might think: just bind the teeth and tongue layers to a bone and slide the bone as part of the Action animation. This will move these layers for all of the mouth drawings in your Switch layer at once. Note: you might be tempted to use reference layers to do this but personally I think it's easier and more reliable to use this bone trick. (Tip: Shy the bone after setting up the Action. This will reduce the clutter around the head since you don't need to touch this bone after the Action has been animated.)
If you want to make the turned mouth look
really convincing, then you'll want to modify the drawings themselves...but now you're getting into a lot more work so be sure you want/need to go there.
This technique will get reasonably to the 3qtr view pose. If you're not concerned about cutting out the side of the head for the profile view, then you can just push the mouth all the way past the head shape's edge, and let the head mask out part of the mouth. Or you can leave the mouth slightly off the the side like they do in a lot of anime for profile views. We used both of these tricks for cave painting characters in the original
The Croods tv show.
If you want the mouth to be cut out more realistically, I find it easier to make a separate head drawing with a big hole where the mouth goes, and then I fill this with a parallel set of side mouth drawings. These mouths can be synchronized with the front/3qtr view, so when the head turn reaches the 3qtr point, Moho switches to a profile version of the head. This is what we did when I was working on the original
Boss Baby tv show and it worked very well there.
You can see examples of the above on my demo reels here...
https://vimeo.com/littlegreendog
Hope this helps.
