Frame By Frame for Planning

[strider2000]

I was working on a music video and had a sequence that was tough for me. It was a side flip. I used to be a gymnast and so I wanted to try to make it look realistic. I thought it would be cool to use the new Frame by Frame feature of AS Pro 11 to plan it out. Here's a quick little illustration of it.

The planning sketches are not realistic, but that's the whole point. FBF gave me a very quick way to get the timing right (or as close as I could do in a reasonable amount of time).

Things I learned in the process
- focus on the whole scene. I initially moved off the screen in my motion, so I had to adjust that.
- the process was an excellent type of pre-vis for the timing
- think of pegs from Toon Boom. When I started with AS I did character translation and rotation by moving the layer. I later started moving the main body bone. In this situation I realized that the easiest approach would have been to use the layer for rotation, but the main body bone for translation.

Things I stumbled over
- Initially after about frame 5 something happened to the drawing. It became almost invisible. Not sure why. I had to redraw, but that was easy.
- Duplicating and flipping a frame. I wanted to have some of the layers be symmetric, but it seemed to affect both the duplicate and the original.

I'm sure it will be even easier next time, but I definitely will be doing this for planning challenging sections in the future.

[funksmaname]

Great, thanks for sharing - this is probably the most useful uses for fbf imho! planning makes perfect

[ulrik]

Thanks for sharing, very useful!

[Philly]

Pretty cool strider! Enough to convince me to upgrade from 9.5.

[strider2000]

Glad it was helpful

[eric1223]

Things I stumbled over
- Initially after about frame 5 something happened to the drawing. It became almost invisible. Not sure why. I had to redraw, but that was easy.
- Duplicating and flipping a frame. I wanted to have some of the layers be symmetric, but it seemed to affect both the duplicate and the original.

I'm sure it will be even easier next time, but I definitely will be doing this for planning challenging sections in the future.

This is pretty good. I like the start up before the jump. I was actually going to show an example of how I do same thing, but you beat me to it. It is a running animation towards the screen.

MLA tip: There is a way to flip your drawing without flipping a frame. while you keep it symmetrical. In your select point tool, and your transform point tool, there is that option to flip your drawing vertical or horizontal. Its a button on the top of your screen to the left of your content libreary/character wizard. If you're undocked, then it may be right on top of it...

[Greenlaw]

That is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing that.

Coincidentally, I did something similar last week at work using another animation program. I needed to show several characters holding hands in a chain, being blown into the air by a strong wind. Animating a convincing wave motion with only the cut-out characters seemed like it was going to be difficult without a guide so using the program's FBF tools, I animated a simple wave line that would serve as a guide that flowed through the arms of the characters. Once I got the wave animtion looking right, it was really easy to line up the cut-out character rigs right on top of the wave line.

Just putting out another use for the technique. As you demonstrated in your video, this same technique translates perfectly to ASP 11.

G.

P.S., although, now that I'm thinking about it, the wave guide would actually be easier to animate in ASP with its regular vector tools. D'oh!