How to have a character half in/half out a door?

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 4:29 pm

Part of the problem seems to be that you avoid to change anything else in that file although it would make your life so much easier ...

1. Staging: as long as the top of the door touches the top of the frame, nobody will ever notice that your wall was done in 2 parts. So by just making that door high enough and let the wall above it never be seen you can use the simplest of all solutions, the 2-part wall.

2. Colours: why is there a gradient in that wall anyway? It is too weak to be noticed anyway, and in your example pic I can see ugly banding. It's good enough to have the right part of the wall in flat colour, and the left part wit a gradient starting with said flat colour. This way the parts would fuse invisibly.

3. Mask: so the mask is eating half of that black outline of the door. So what? Zoom into the project and nudge the mask to the left so it aligns with the outline.

(4. Wall as image: This solution wasn't mentioned but is a possible one as well. In that case I recommend textured walls (a striped wallpaper covers so many things!) and a smoothly feathered border where one image tops the other.)

5. Know when to stop: so many little glitches are totally invisible in the finished film, so why waste precious time in correcting everything in the project file? If it works, it works, and nobody gives you an Oscar for Perfectly Balanced Bone Rig anyway.

I don't blame you for missing any of these, because this stuff comes naturally with experience.

Yosemite Sam · Post by **Yosemite Sam** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 7:13 pm

Thank you, Slowtiger, I needed that dose of reality.

Over-analyzing can be a b***h.

Edit: The mask. I tried, really tried, to zoom in and adjust the mask to line up with the stroke of the door. Problem is, the door, being at an angle, has jaggies in it, and I can't seem to align the mask properly, no matter how much I zoom in.

Doesn't matter. I'm jumping over dollars for pennies. As I said before, content is king. I'm not applying for an animation position. I'm putting together a demo for a show.