BSA324, animation experiment AE, 20-21 September,2017

20th
AE character animation workflow tutorial  no sound.  will keep this link in case.

Character rigging tutorial  short and useful!

Girl Front puppet, fully rigged in AE

All of the facial expressions are attached to her head and are in place.  They can be turned on and off as needed.  The extra hands and skirts, for walking, are also attached and hidden.  

21st

Went through what's possible in AE with Rachel this morning.  All the software packages do the same thing, essentially, it's a matter of committing to one and getting to it.  In AE, the puppet pin (looks like a thumbtack icon on the tool bar) is very useful.  I thought that I might need another midsection piece so Girl had a waist for sitting but the pin means that's unnecessary.  

In spite of Girl's awkward stance, this is very instructive.  The yellow donut shapes are where the pins are.  Each of these points can be separately animated so she can look like she's sitting or her dress is floating.  I can even put one in her pigtails to get a little bouncing action.  I will have to go back to the original file and separate it from her ear where it's attached for that to work.  Animating Graffiti Girl's pigtails was a pain, but I may have learned something from that process and this time it'll be sweet. 

After animating the figure completely, I can group, or Pre-compose the layers, by hitting CTRL shift C.  They then have their own timeline that can't be messed with when I'm working with other characters, backgrounds, or lights.  

Speaking of lights!  I can't find the create lights option on the tool bar and she showed it to me twice 5 minutes ago.  lol.  I'll look that up online.  The lights can be coloured, rotated, programmed to effect the puppet and not the background, or vice versa.  Once all the layers go in there, it's a 3D playing field.  The lights can be animated on and off like everything else.

for BSA326: have breakdowns of the sets, the puppets going into those rendered layers, the effects that have been done to those layers.  I can talk about Zbrush and Maya sculpting for this class as it relates to the toys,but the 3D printing process is strictly for BSA306.

Game plan confirmed:  Slick and shiny product is priority one.  I will focus on getting the opening beautiful to work in concert with the book and the toys as I'm looking for funding. 

   Rachel showed me how to put a shadow into the background.  This will come in handy as I try to marry the 2D puppets together with the 3D backgrounds.