How do I facial features?

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Goei
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:32 pm

How do I facial features?

Post by Goei »

I like the set up of Winsor, but I don't know how I change his emotion in the timeline. How do those switch layers work? Is there a better way?
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mkelley
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Post by mkelley »

You probably should work through the tutorials so you understand how AS works.

For switch layers you move to where you want to change them in the timeline and then right-click the appropriate layer top and choose what layer you want. For Windsor, for example, you could right-click the Mouth layer and choose "Mouth-sarcastic" at frame 10 and that would change it there. You can do the same thing for the eyes and eyebrows.

Is there a better way? I like using switch layers to do facial expressions, but note that Windsor's expressions (like all of Windsor) are made up of bitmapped graphics and thus immediately "change" without any subtlety. What I do for my characters is create the eyebrows, eyes and mouth as vector shapes and by using the same vertices I can have them "morph" into position by choosing "interpolate" in the switch options. This looks much more natural and indeed emulates what happens in most high-end cartoon work (the difference between The Simpsons and the old Hanna-Barbara cartoons, for example).

As you are learning, though, this is just fine -- eventually you'll discover what works best for you.
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