Has anyone had a character move from a standing to a sitting position from a frontal view? I cannot figure out the perspective when the legs fold to sit on a chair?
Reference is your best bet to solve the issue.
There’s clips around if you look for them like this one on YouTube, and the best thing to do is shoot your own so you can hit the poses you want for your character.
Sorry, I was not clear enough. I meant an animated character. I already have clips of a real person sitting. The issue is to get the animated character (2D) back into the chair (a jpg image) and to get the perspective on the legs correct.
I’m no expert, but a couple of things I’d be sure to do is set up a perspective ground grid on an underlying element. Then work on constructing a rough character using basic solids (cylinder, etc) to build sort of a manuequin that will allow you to see the basic form.
Finally, the colors you use will help also. I like to use three shades of a color for the base, the highlight, and the shadow. Using highlights and shadows can help define form in movement for a more clear read.
hey there joseph,
first of all, I would strongly recommend taking both Rob’s and Sticky’s advice. Animators use photo’s & video references all the time, and in the age of digital cameras, it’s never been easier to do. You don’t have to necessarily trace or rotoscope each frame, but you can surely use them to help get a grasp on the perspective you want. Also as Sticky said, if you film yourself sitting, you can really nail all the poses that you would like to animate. Is your character going to slowly & cautiously sit in their chair? Or are they just going to flop down in exhaustion after a hard day’s work? These are things you can determine beforehand & then act out yourself to get a much better feel for things like timing and of course perspective in the various poses.
And just to build on what Rob suggested with the perspective grid, I would definitely start off rough with nothing but basic 3d shapes. Also, for this particular movement, I would suggest working with keys & inbetweens as opposed to animating straight ahead. Not sure which you are currently doing, but if you can draw your char standing, then get a decent drawing of him sitting where the perspective is correct, I think you’ll find it much easier to fill in the inbetweens and keep perspective. Again, do this with just basic shapes at first, then once you get a motion you are happy with, go ahead & clean it up.
Hope that helped some.
Oh & hi everyone, I’m still breathing 
Thanks, these are very helpful suggestions and they seem to be working.