Animation Help

DustyShinigami

This is aimed at Chris mainly - what did you use to animate your Brain sprite? I'm trying to make my own using After Effects, and I can do side walking animations, but I'm not sure how to do them as though the character is walking towards the camera or away. How did you do this? Thanks.

ChrisIceBox

All in Blender - toon shading on the surface, with Freestyle to add the line effects.

DustyShinigami

Oh, okay. Can't say I've ever tried 2D in Blender... If I can't figure out a way to do it in After Effects I may have to give that a try. Thanks.

DustyShinigami

I'm a bit lost with how to do a front-facing walk animation in Blender. How did you go about doing the feet?

ChrisIceBox

The animation or the feet?  It's just the same animation as the sideways-facing one, rendered from a front-pacing orthographic camera.

DustyShinigami

Was your Brain sprite completely modelled in 3D but made to look 2D? My sprite is completely 2D and flat. But yeah, it's the feet I'm having problems with. I followed a guide on rigging and animating a 2D sprite in Blender (it's all new to me), but it caters more to sideways-facing animation. Mine's basically set up like a marionette or as though I've used a puppet tool.

I may have to go back to After Effects and do it in there and just swap some different foot positions in and out between frames etc.

Alverik

@DustyShinigami Well, if you want really flowing 2D animations you could also try rotoscoping from video. You basically trace the silhouette of a real person from a video for a few frames. Then you draw over the resulting frames to add extra detail. After Effects has tools for Rotoscoping, but mainly to "cut" parts of a video, ie: cut the actor to change the background or add toon effects or other vfx, etc.

DustyShinigami

@Alverik I had no idea you could do that in After Effects. Pretty cool. I'm still a newbie to all of this and have been learning bits and pieces whilst at college. I have my character designed already with some basic animations, but I'm just trying to figure out how to animate her as though she was walking towards the camera or away. Maybe some diagonal directions too.

Alverik

@DustyShinigami You mean the way the size of the character changes as he approaches the camera?? or just the right look in the animation? (ie: the perspective in which the character is drawn). I though the issue of making the character bigger or smaller based on camera distance is something AC can already handle (I think it's in the 2D video tutorial). For the other situation you'll have to look at reference materials and try to imitate the right perspective I guess. If you don't want to redraw some parts of the character you may need to try and skew and squash some of the body parts.

Since I'm better at 3D, if I had to make a 2D character I would probably end up just making a character 3D, lol, then capture the frames I need by posing the model. This would give you a character that looks 3D even if it's just a 2D animation (like old Donkey Kong country did).  Well, you can do a 2D looking 3D character too if you use vertex colors or other toon shading before capturing the frames. This technique could be rather useless for PC though, but would give a good increase in framerates for mobile. Anyway, sorry for the detour, lol.

ChrisIceBox

Yeah - Brain's built in 3D but rendered in 2D with toon shading.  The model was actually the same one used in For The Winnings and Day Of The Jackass.

DustyShinigami

@Alverik ;Just the right look in the animation. I know AC can help with the layer sizing as the character approaches the camera. But yeah, I just need to get my head around how to animate the character as though they were walking forward/towards the camera - getting the right arm, leg and feet positions etc.
@ChrisIceBox Okay then. I'm still practising in 3D with Blender so I may experiment and try to do a simple character model.

Thanks for all your help.