Frame by frame animation

[Furpuss]

Hi everyone-
I decided to try my hand at frame by frame animation. I like it because it gives the characters much greater flexibility. There is no rig or bones used here. It's basically just shape animation. The hands and feet are in Switch layers. The disadvantages of FBF animation is that you have to draw the animation on paper first, shoot it on video and bring it into AS as a template to work over. Same thing as rotoscoping. One of the tricky parts was getting the hands and feet to work over and under the other body parts. I solved this by making duplicate sets of both hands and feet which were placed on top of and behind the rest of the body. Then in the Layer Settings box, I checked Allow Animated Layer Settings and switched the Opacity setting back & forth from 0 to 100%.

You can see it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwXHnTM ... e=youtu.be

Cheers-
Furpuss

[sargumphigaus]

Might I suggest you throw an extra frame with for feet. the transition between the balls of his ankle to down flat is sudden and stands out in comparison to the smoothness of the rest. I think one more foot frame to connect the two will establish a motion instead of a sense of teleportation. Aside from that, this is astonishingly well done. Walk cycles are hard, especially from frontward angles. I dig the double bounce style too.

[Danimal]

Agreed on the feet suddenly plopping into place. Everything else is extremely well done!

[Yosemite Sam]

Yeah, this is really well done!

[neeters_guy]

Agree, overall really nice and very polished.

[EHEBrandon]

Not bad usually frame by frame is better that's what I usually do with my animation.

[Furpuss]

You guys are absolutely right about the foot snap. I realized after I posted it it should have had another in-between in there.
Thanks for the crit.

Furpuss

[Little Yamori]

Agree with the feet, but that's really minor, wonderfully smooth otherwise, great inspiration to see other techniques at work.

[sargumphigaus]

Not bad usually frame by frame is better that's what I usually do with my animation.

I'll take FBF over bone rigging any day (No offense to anyone here) I almost abandoned this program in favor of Flash or Toonboom because of its lack of leniency towards it. But the tween option: STEP which was implemented in 9.0 changed everything. The STEP option in conjunction to switch layering gives that edge. Which is excellent because flash and toonboom are stupid expensive.

[lwaxana]

Nicely done! The walk is convincing and conveys attitude well.

[drichird]

I think you did a great job. He's got a great bounce to his walk, lot of happy attitude, GREAT job on the hands especially. What you are saying about FBF vs. rigging resonates with me, I am still new but have done a little 3D animation (very simple rigs) as well as 2D, I'm thinking the problem with 2D rigging is even once you have it rigged you it is still basically a 2D rig and you can't really rotate it, you're still locked into a fairly restricted camera view/character rotation, so you still end up doing a bunch of work to make hands/feet appear/disappear etc... whereas in 3D once you got the rig right you can rotate the character from here to eternity with no problem. Anyways you did a great job I'm sure just that couple of seconds of animation took hours and hours of hard work on your part, hope to see more great stuff from you.

[Furpuss]

I think you did a great job. He's got a great bounce to his walk, lot of happy attitude, GREAT job on the hands especially. What you are saying about FBF vs. rigging resonates with me, I am still new but have done a little 3D animation (very simple rigs) as well as 2D, I'm thinking the problem with 2D rigging is even once you have it rigged you it is still basically a 2D rig and you can't really rotate it, you're still locked into a fairly restricted camera view/character rotation, so you still end up doing a bunch of work to make hands/feet appear/disappear etc... whereas in 3D once you got the rig right you can rotate the character from here to eternity with no problem. Anyways you did a great job I'm sure just that couple of seconds of animation took hours and hours of hard work on your part, hope to see more great stuff from you.

I think your assessment about 2D vs 3D is basically correct. But for me the big picture is how to create animation more efficiently and less labor-intensive. As a 3D animator for many years, I agree that 3D rigs are great but it's a LOT of work to model and rig a character. As for the problem of not being able to rotate the character, there is a partial solution for that. AS actually does have some 3D functions which has been explored by a French guy called Lychee and you can see a tutorial on his 2.5D technique. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-lS-UZBlN8

I did some animation using his ideas and it just blew my mind how easy it is to get a 3D look to your animation.

Thanks for your comments on an important issue-
Furpuss

[3deeguy]

I like this guy whoever he is. He's a beatnik with a 'bop' walking style. The baritone sax is perfect. I hope you have some stories in the works for him.