Fingers

[Rancid_Snowman]

Hi, okay: I am currently producing a full length film animated with Anime Studio, and there are times when the characters need to point to something, pick something up, and generally use their fingers. However, in most of the action we don't see close-up shots of their hands. I'm kind of worried that the process of trying to angle the fingers and adjust them just right for every pose will be mind-numbing. Can someone give me some advice as to how to have fingers on them, but in a semi-maneagable way that won't clutter up the shot? Thanks!

[slowtiger]

Hands and fingers are the most complicated thing to rig in 2D. In 3D it would be easy, but in 2D there's too much change of overlapping shapes involved. That's why a lot of 2D stuff uses a bunch of pre-fabricated hands in different poses and views and just switch from one to another.

[heyvern]

If you really want individual fingers but don't need lots of detail, use sausage shaped vectors for fingers (they don't bend past the first knuckly) and a single bone for each finger. This could give you enough motion to work. Then create actions for a bunch of bone/hand positions you can reuse over and over and still have the option to tweak. I used this technique recently for a new character rig and it works great and is very easy fast to use.

You can even use switches to "flip" the hands (change shape order) if needed or have additional switch layers for hand positions that don't work with bones.

Either way hands will be tedious. You either draw a lot of different hand positions or move bones... both techniques have drawbacks as far as the work involved and the variety of hand positions.

-vern

[slowtiger]

I suggest to go through the whole storyboard and copy or note all hand movements and poses you need. Some stuff will be quite easy to do, other will be a real pain in the ass, like all turns around X and Y.

It is very likely that you will use both methods on a scene-by-scene base.

[Rancid_Snowman]

Okay! I like the idea of the combo between simple vectors and switch layers. I actually never thought of that until now, and now it seems obvious! Fantastic, thanks for your help!