mcahogarth

Assets

Added 2017-12-15 17:41:03 +0000 UTC

Anastasia asked what I was using and how, so here's a screenshot!

I'm animating in Clip Studio (because that's what I got!).

So what I did was... draw two head positions, three eye positions, four eyebrows, and two mouths. All those go on separate animation layers. All those I organized into labeled folders (which you can see on the right there--I've got the "eyebrows" folder open).

Then, the timeline, which controls when each picture is shown, lets you designate which layer is displayed when. The timeline's the thing on the bottom there. If you have a look at that, you can see that, for instance, from the "heads" folder I've got only the one layer selected to run for the entire length of the animation. But above it, from the "eyes" folder, I've got the eyes open layer selected until the 14th second, then it runs the closed-eyes. Etc.

The idea, then, is that I can "schedule" these layers in whatever order I want to make the talking head have a (limited) set of actions. If I need something more active, you'll see lots and lots of individual cels suddenly... like the Hair folder, on the bottom, where I used one asset (the "flat" hair) and then for a third of the run, I'm doing frame-by-frame changes so that the hair ruffles before returning to the "flat" frame.

Anyway, that's where I am with my self-education. My goal is to animate Jaguar Head saying something (I'll have to record the track myself, but that's appropriate?). We'll see if I stick with it or get distracted by popcorn kittens. :)