While I appreciate the amount of depth and time spent on the tutorial series for Animate Pro 3, I was wondering if there were any quicker tutorials for getting a cut-out character built, rigged and animating in the shortest amount of time?
sorry for the double post, dunno how that happened…
Kyu-bum Lee has a few really good tutorials on his youtube channel. He goes through eye set ups, mouths, whole characters, and then he goes in and shows you how they use that set up in the field. They aren’t exactly short videos, but they are broken up into nice sized segments.
Here is part one of his character set up:
http://youtu.be/Cat4ZGhrKVs
I’m really waiting for this guys book to come out this summer:
http://bitey.com
I think in general though you are right. Sometimes you just want to watch a 15-20 minute video where you don’t necessarily want to know what all the other functions are or a list of the various ways you could set up the same character.
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Hrm, I really like the node-based set up but I guess that probably has something to do with me using a lot of Shake back when.
I have used some Anime Studio Pro too, and I actually find that they have some cut-out animation tools that are more powerful than Animate Pro(yet the over all line quality and render isn’t nearly as good.)
I mean, those control switches you can build into your puppet that drive point animation so you have something akin to a digital waldo are really next level and I haven’t seen anything else like that except for in 3d applications. The Smart Bones are also pretty great as well.
Its easy for them to build in though I guess because we are talking about really simple forms that are made up of a hand full of points unlike the great line quality that you get from Animate and Animate Pro.
Here is a little test I did umm… a couple years back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz7g1SvZIJg
Maybe Toon Boom needs to make some kind of “Toon Boom Puppet” that utilizes these features.
But yeah, the best thing to do is absorb those videos in moderation and try to follow along with your own character you are making. Its easy to have a brain meltdown otherwise.
Ironically, this is exactly how I felt coming into Toon Boom Studio several years back. I felt it was too much interface in my face and have only given Animate Pro a try recently when it was evangelized by the great John K.(He actually advised Animate and is sort of old school and anti cut-out-puppet seemingly.)
But yeah, I’m not all the way there yet myself with Animate Pro, but I can feel it all starting to gel and I think the quality level will be way beyond what you can get with those other programs… so stick it out!
After watching the first 2 videos from Kyu-bum Lee, I have come to the conclusion, I am in waaaay over my head. I’ve done animation with Anime Studio Pro, a little bit with Flash, and toyed around with CrazyTalk Animator all of which are toys compared to Animate Pro 3. (BTW, I’m strictly a hobbyist) I fully comprehend and understand the basics of animation such as forecasting, follow through, squish and stretch, etc… I get the cut-out methodologies and know quite well how to keyframe. But it seems this application takes all those things to the upteenth level, as well as adds a whole lot of complications such as the Network, dragging and dropping nodes to accomplish certain things… ACK, I feel like I might need a degree in Rocket Science in order to come to terms with this application.
I didn’t see the test JackPaybackson (may I call you Jack?)… I tried in Chrome and in Internet Explorer, but I don’t see anything.
I have to admit, it was a spur of the moment, spontaneous purchase (Animate Pro 3). I’ve had it for a while, but never really did anything in it because I was indeed overwhelmed by the interface. Remember, I’m strictly a hobbyist with no aspirations to becoming a pro at all. So I have to ask myself, if it’s worth it. Worth the time and effort to attempt learning it just to fiddle-fart around and make cute little videos for my own entertainment, and for friends and family.
One of the things I’ve always hated about Anime Studio Pro was it only allowed for a single audio clip, per character (unless you wanted to create a multitude of switch layer copies, 1 for each audio segment). Eventually as I was trying to create a complicated conversation, I threw my hands up in frustration and went on the hunt for an application that would allow for multiple audio clips, which is what led me to Animate Pro 3 to begin with. As I said, it was a spur of the moment, spontaneous decision, and obviously one that wasn’t quite thought out very well.
I suppose since I spent the $$, I owe it to myself to attempt it. But I want to keep animation fun, and if I have to dedicate so many hours (days, weeks, even months) to learn the software, I predict it wouldn’t be so much fun anymore.
I’ve got some long and hard thinking to do…
Hrm, I am able to view it on my computer and my phone as well. Its just a youtube link.
Its just a test of using bones to drive other things like eyebrows and eyelids, nothing really spectacular.
Hi josephE_33218,
It sounds like you may have been more comfortable with Animate not Animate Pro? Animate takes away the network view (which can be a bit daunting) while still having most of the features of Animate Pro. Having said that… yay you have Animate Pro! It’s an amazing piece of software and doesn’t HAVE to be a complicated. There are a lot of bells and whistles but you just need to focus on the features you want to use until you get your head around it. Then you can get more fancy when the basics are out of the way (if you want to).
The reason these tutorials are pretty detailed is because rigging a mixed rig is a very detailed job. I don’t know of any quicker tutorials (sorry) but I know that Tony Ross and Cartoon Smart also make Toon Boom rigging vids that you might want to check out. They might rig the character differently and maybe simplified? Not sure, check em out!
You might feel overwhelmed watching the rigging tutorials (I know I did at first) but I would suggest rigging your own character while watching the videos at the same time. Not only do they explain what to do, but they explain why it’s rigged that way and you’ll come to understand how it can speed up animating time. Even if you don’t understand what the hell you’re doing… trust me, just follow along and rig a character like this and it’ll save you a lot of headaches down the track. I’ve rigged heaps of characters with this method and although it seems like it takes a long time it will actually gain you time animating.
Hang in there! It doesn’t matter if you just want to make simple animations, if you want to make cutout animation devote some time to learning how to rig characters properly and animating them will be soooo much easier.
Ps. The network view is amazing once you have your head around it and I’ve found it a LOT easier to work with than the timeline view.
Yeah, this is the conclusion I’ve kinda come too as well. I’ve built and rigged a variety of characters in other software so the process or ideas behind it aren’t new to me (2D & 3D). And taking what I already know, I’ve been able to build a simple character in Animate Pro and do some basic animations using just forward kinematics and parent-child hierarchy on the limbs, without ever going into the network view. I’ll slowly, ever so slowly start messing around with the network view. The concept of it makes sense to me, but it just seems so tedious and awfully repetitious, and strictly IMO, looks messy and unorganized.