Moho Forum

Hi

I'm looking for a good tutorial about frame by frame animations for cutout character (with and without bones) just like those videos:

Wow, that took him over an hour. That's nuts for a glorified bouncing ball animation.

the purpose of the tutorial is making fbf animation with shapes and cut-out characters (no pencil)

I think you are using wrong keywords for your search....
Have you tried with "12 principles of animation"?

Yeah, FBF and cut-out are two very different kinds of animation. He is using cut-out animation in those videos.

he used stop motion keyframes if I right

synthsin75 wrote:Yeah, FBF and cut-out are two very different kinds of animation. He is using cut-out animation in those videos.

I haven't watched the above video but, FWIW, the two techniques can certainly be combined--even within the same character rig. There are situations where using FBF for parts of a character can actually be easier and more effective than using bones with 'static' art alone, and there are situations where bones can help augment FBF sequences.

I've had a handful of assignments at work where I needed to use both techniques in a scene and the release of ASP 11 has certainly made it easier.

IMO, the lines are getting blurry these days.

Cobra5005 wrote:he used stop motion keyframes if I right

'Stop motion keys' just means there are holds between keyframes. When I enable this feature in Harmony, it's the same as when I enable Copy Previous Key and set my keyframe interpolation to Step in ASP.

Cobra5005--
I don't know of a tutorial, but (after a quick scrub through of the vid), it appears that he may just have a layer with a bunch of shapes that he is transforming individually on each frame. If so, i believe that could be done by just using the "duplicate frame" button in the "frame by frame" layer/group... Didn't notice him using onions skinning, but that would help.

Greenlaw--
That's great to hear! Do you have any tips on doing this? I've seen very little info on a workflow like that, but sounds amazing ...May be some tutorials somewhere that i've missed?

I'm planning to record some ASP 'tips and tricks' videos soon, featuring techniques I picked up from helpful users like synthsin75, Victor Paredes and others, and some techniques I figured out at work and while working on own my personal projects. Naturally, NDA prevent me from using scenes or footage from work so I'll have to create my own original content for these videos. Certainly doable, I just need to make the time to do it.

I'll make an announcement here when I start posting things.

Greenlaw wrote:

synthsin75 wrote:Yeah, FBF and cut-out are two very different kinds of animation. He is using cut-out animation in those videos.

I haven't watched the above video but, FWIW, the two techniques can certainly be combined--even within the same character rig. There are situations where using FBF for parts of a character can actually be easier and more effective than using bones with 'static' art alone, and there are situations where bones can help augment FBF sequences.

I've had a handful of assignments at work where I needed to use both techniques in a scene and the release of ASP 11 has certainly made it easier.

IMO, the lines are getting blurry these days.

I didn't say they couldn't be combined, but the OP said, "tutorial about frame by frame animations for cutout character". You cannot technically do frame by frame on a cut-out itself because a cut-out is a permanent asset where FBF creates new assets per frame. But yes, you can do FBF along with, or as a part of, a cut-out character.

All that seems to be happening in this video can be recreated in AS by setting the default interpolation to step (no auto tweening) and freeze pose. Have some switches set up for different elements that need switching, then just animate everything by hand. The mechanics of this isn't the hard part, it just requires more knowledge of animation...(i've not watched the video fully, but it seems there is some auto interpolation on the position and scale of the layers in parts of it?

Yeah, as far as I watched, he's animating on twos with tweening between keyframes. There's nothing here I'd call FBF.

Greenlaw wrote:I'm planning to record some ASP 'tips and tricks' videos soon, featuring techniques I picked up from helpful users like synthsin75, Victor Paredes and others, and some techniques I figured out at work and while working on own my personal projects. Naturally, NDA prevent me from using scenes or footage from work so I'll have to create my own original content for these videos. Certainly doable, I just need to make the time to do it.

I'll make an announcement here when I start posting things.

Awesome, Man! Anything on the subject you could put together would be greatly appreciated!
I like seeing your work, but if you only had time for quick-n-dirty, i'm sure no one would complain

Cobra5005: I recommend you get hold of a book like "How To Make Animated Films" by Tony White (http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Animated ... 0240810333) or similar ones, because it seems to me that you may have mixed up some terms.

Cut-Out: this means the characters are not drawn with lines, but composed of discreet elements, like body parts, from photos or drawings or whatever flat material. This is a definition on the level of aestethics.

Frame-by-frame: this means the animator does all key poses and inbetweens by hand, not relying on automatic tweening done by software. The second meaning is to draw the character completely new in each frame, instead of building a puppet once and only move the skeleton later. This is a definition on the level of method of working.

So of course you can animate a cutout character in frame-by-frame fashion. But in AS you also have the choice, in each single frame, to let the program help you with tweening and even physics.