hidding/showing lines for facial expressions

[Víctor Paredes]

EDIT:
Link to see the face in action on youtube (it's the official tv spot channel, please don't make personal comments there).For some reason the link to the animated gif is not working and I haven't a backup)
AS has as a way of work that sometimes can be a limitation: any draw you made on it, will be always present on the whole animation. You can, of course, hide layers, turn fills transparent or simply put the shape off of the screen, etc, but the construction curves will be always on the animation.

Well, we can take advantage of that behavior. check this gif:

(I just found a backup )
It has several curves which width is zero until you want to show them. This way you can make several expressions and add or remove lines depending of what you want.
Check the anme file. It has each expression on an action (to use blend morph). Takes some time to construct it, but works like a charm for long projects.

PD: the character has hair, ears and body. sadly I'm not allowed to share the whole character now, so I reduced to the minimal.

[neeters_guy]

This is a great tip. Since the hide line tool doesn't animate, this is a much better solution.

Thanks, selgin! You rock!

[GCharb]

Yeah, nice technique, thanks for sharing this!

G

[patricia3d]

Thanks Selgin. My Directoy of Selgin's presents is increasing...
Best source to learn.

[pez]

I don't understand.
Do you mean you delete shapes on different positions?
I'm asking this because you can't set the width of a path to 0. The minimum is 0.25

Thks for clarifying

[Víctor Paredes]

I don't understand.
Do you mean you delete shapes on different positions?
I'm asking this because you can't set the width of a path to 0. The minimum is 0.25

Thks for clarifying

Uhm, it's a good question. I have pro version with many modified tools. Right now I don't know if I have a modified line width tool. Maybe the default tool never let you to reduce the width to zero... uhm, have you tried putting zero on the textbox?

[neeters_guy]

Stroke width won't animate using the style window (and, as you mentioned, won't allow a width smaller than 0.25).

Instead, select the point with the width tool (key 'w') and drag to the left to make it disappear; or enter 0 in the Width textbox at the top. This will create keyframes on the timeline.

[funksmaname]

Hey selgin, great technique! also, your facial animation demo is fantastic

I wanted to try it - here's the result I used it to create an outline for the eye when the face turns too... i'm sure there are other uses!

[Víctor Paredes]

Oh didn't see this before, great example!
(more considering that for some reason my image link is broken now)

[funksmaname]

oh... hehe... i can still see your example in the first post

[meltedtoons]

@funksmaname could you upload the anme file? I wanna take a look at how you did the head turn, or could you explain it to me?

[funksmaname]

i'm not even sure I still have that file - but it's just a matter of shape stack ordering - the nose is not a line, its a shape with the same colour as the head with hidden outlines on the bits you dont see - this is positioned with one eye above it and one below, so as you turn the features it will overlap and cover the back eye. i think the eyelids in this case are just 'half egg' shapes on top of a circle for the eyeball. The mouth probably uses the technique i explain in the screencast on my footer - so I'd check that out.

Also look at selgin's 'new and improved head turn' technique as that is an alternative (yet more complicated) way that allows you to cut a mouth shape into the profile shape on rotation - but deffinately start with the shape stacking vid.