Moho Forum

hi everybody, i was wondering if you guys could help me out with some considerations in the character design process to optimize the animation in anime studio... long legs or short legs?? big eyes or small eyes?? and so on.

wat would be the best character design to animate in as, in every aspect?

Actually there are no rules about designing your character. Ok, we can tell you your character must have personality, but that is an aspect you can't define without seeing a draw. If you present us a picture of your character maybe we can give some subjective advices of how it could have a better looking, but there is no rule about anything you could do.

AS can animate all kinds of characters if you construct them well. You just must have in consideration that your character body must be animated according its physical structure. For example, a fat short legged character probably will walk with very short and fast steps, maybe the legs don't even cross each other position and the body will rotate a lot while walking.
A long legged character instead will walk with much longer slower steps and maybe the body come up and down big vertical distance on each one.
Maybe you character don't even have legs and be some kind of bouncing ball. Or an alien with seven legs, who knows. Just think in what of your draws you want to see with life, how you think it should move. Try acting your self as your character, that helps a lot to figure out how to do it.

Now, usually simple characters has a common constructions in AS. All character is inside a bone layer which skeleton moves all body. A switch layer with two vector layers inside for the eyes, one for open eyes and the other for closed eyes. Another switch layer has the mouth with several vector layers, one for each phoneme, if you want your character talk.
For the rest of the body generally each extremity is its own vector layer, I mean, arm left, arm right, head, thorax, leg left and leg right.

But remember this is not a rule, you can have all your character in just one vector layer or have hundreds of layers each one for one little detail. With practice you will know exactly depending of the kind of animation you want how many layers and what type of layers to use for any character or object you want to animate.

I think the issues are, how many layeys, how many bones. if you have pro, what kind of groups.
I ended up re-creating a character 3 times because my animation technique did not match the way it was constructed.
A few other issues. Is it symmetrical or not. How do the eyes, arms, legs look when turned. Do you need fingers?
How much free time do you have to make these is another factor. Do you like never seeing the sun?

jose1984alberto wrote:long legs or short legs?? big eyes or small eyes?? and so on.

For your first character, go with short legs and big eyes. Most cartoon characters have these characteristics.

For your second character, also go with short legs and big eyes, but make the eyes even bigger. However, keep the legs the same size (unless you didn't make them short enough the first time).

For your third character, make it a talking dog.

For your fourth character, make it an angry robot that carries a sword.

That's as far as I can help you.

Which story do you want to tell? Is it a story where characters mostly talk? Then concentrate on big heads with readable faces. Is it a story with lots of movement? Then concentrate on "fit" characters, with extremities long enough to be bent or to touch each other.

If you don't have any idea, go to the next comic shop or library and weed through a pile of underground comics from wherever. Try to watch as many different designs as possible. Try to judge them: how would this translate to movement, how would this head look in a turn, how would this face look in a close-up?

tonym wrote:

jose1984alberto wrote:long legs or short legs?? big eyes or small eyes?? and so on.

For your first character, go with short legs and big eyes. Most cartoon characters have these characteristics.

For your second character, also go with short legs and big eyes, but make the eyes even bigger. However, keep the legs the same size (unless you didn't make them short enough the first time).

For your third character, make it a talking dog.

For your fourth character, make it an angry robot that carries a sword.

That's as far as I can help you.

That's great advice.

And the 5th character should be the ghost
of Michael Jackson.

Again, very useful advice. You'd think this would all be included in the help files, but it isn't.

you crack me up, dog

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F.M. wrote:You know, this will make it hard, on whoever is currently busting spam!

You might be right, and I know Vern has asked in the past that we ignore spam and dont reply, but I think you have to take your laughs where you find them.

Sorry Vern