I started off with research to try and find out how character animator works. as i was thinking of doing an animation and wanted to try the program. i watched u=youtube videos and followed some of the tutorials on the adobe website.
after much research and consideration I have discovered that character animator is very difficult(annoying) to use.
I’m actually being dramatic, its not that difficult. however it is a pain in the arse to try and rig a rhino character to do a simple walk cycle. It’s very difficult to do as the program isn’t yet adapted to a walk cycle for four legged animals. But it is still possible to do it.
it is currently 8 30 pm. I have been trying to make this rhino walk since 4:30pm. Before that I had spent 2 hours, from 12:30 to 2:30pm trying to get my photoshop puppet into character animator in the first place. it kept coming up with some weird error message that it couldn’t render or something warped etc. I found this bloody annoying. eventually I thought the size of the file of the puppet might be too big. I then spent awhile trying to figure out how to decrease the file size. I looked through exporting the file, seeing if I could somehow change the file size when I saved it. nope. I tried going through the preferences on the edit tab. just confusing. eventually I realised I had to go to image then image size. I had spent a very long time trying to do something very simple. so when I finally decreased the size and could get the file into character animator it was 2:30 pm and time for a nap as I was very annoyed by this point.
Now I have got to a point in character animator where the legs are able to make a walking motion, the trunk of the body moves slightly up and down with this movement which is good. however, the rhino head does not move. I’ve placed a walking behaviour and placed handles on the neck and head but its still not moving, I tried making and unmaking the head layer independent. still don’t work. the legs also bend a little funny, and the front arms move a little too far forward from the body.
currently I have decided to leave this for today and email my tutor.
however with the project being so difficult to animate an animal, a human could be easier. So if I do a quick design of a hunter, I could draw it out in pen and separate the line art on photoshop to create a simple puppet of just line work. hopefully if I got this done in a day, I can see if the a human shaped puppet would be easier to animate. If this is the case, it means I could draw out the animals and they’re backgrounds and then use character animator for the hunters which could save me drawing time. however i could look at drawing the backgrounds on photoshop and placing those on animator so that the background moves around the animal puppet.
Until I have some more information from tutor to help with the program, I will begin to write a storyboard and a script. then ill move onto the designs for the characters and begin to draw out some of the frames.
this is a video of the rhino walking. i almost got there. its only the head not bobbing along to the walk of the body that is not working. it was good to learn how to use this program, i spent lots of time making notes and trying to figure out how to use. this is good for the future if i find i ever do need to use it. however i do not feel it is suitable for this project.
