Animating with just lines

[Yosemite Sam]

Hey guys, so the project I'm working on now is just lines. Stick figures. Very simple. I'll include images for reference.

So basically it's a whiteboard type style.

My question is this. How do I have a stick character in front of, let's say a house, without us seeing the house through the character's head?

I played around with masking, but nothing seemed to work. I could give his head a fill that matches the BG color, but this is a huge project with many moving parts, the BG color could change on the fly, so don't see that as an option.

Any thoughts on a solution would be greatly appreciated!


(And of course, images aren't showing up for me in this post. Let me know if the links don't work)

https://imgur.com/DjHqqwA

https://imgur.com/GH4oBTy

[synthsin75]

Sounds like you'd need to put everything, including the background, in a masking group. Then you just set the group to show all, place a reference of the character with a filled head just above the background, and set it to subtract. Set the original character layer to not mask, and everything else to mask.

[SimplSam]

Personally - I would just fill the head in the same way that you have filed the teeth. I don't think anything else is going to work visually.

[Yosemite Sam]

Sounds like you'd need to put everything, including the background, in a masking group. Then you just set the group to show all, place a reference of the character with a filled head just above the background, and set it to subtract. Set the original character layer to not mask, and everything else to mask.

Okay, I did a small test with that previously. But not with an entire rig. These rigs are simple but have a lot of switches, masking, etc. But sounds like that may be the only solution.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

[Yosemite Sam]

Personally - I would just fill the head in the same way that you have filed the teeth. I don't think anything else is going to work visually.

Yeah, I don't think the filled head is an option. But if all else fails I will have to present that to the team.

Thanks, Simplsam!

[hayasidist]

IMO it's not just the (logically) filled shapes (such as the head), but it's also where lines from different objects intersect (e.g. legs and torso over the edges of the hut) that need to be addressed.

quick and dirty in PS to add white outline around the stick figure (note - includes "inside the head" shapes too, so NOT a Moho layer outline).


I tried it with the bg fill colour (Xeaeaea), but IMO pure white as here looked better...

[slowtiger]

I think you have 2 problems here. One is that anything inside a closed shape, like the head, should block the BG. The other is that the lines might blend uncomfortably with any BG lines and make the character unredable.

Maybe styles are the solution: define a fill colour style and fill the head with it. Use the same style for filling the BG. As long as you have only 1 scene without BG colour change in one project file, it should work that you edit the style in that project file and you will always have a full head blocking any BG lines.

The 2nd problem could be solved as already suggested, with the white outline around everything. Maybe even blur it? I also saw another solution by a stylistic choice (I think it was Birdbox Studio?): only the moving character has 100% black lines. Any BG lines should be lighter, like 66% (and this process could berepeated if necessary to stack BG elements).

[hayasidist]

Yeah, I don't think the filled head is an option. But if all else fails I will have to present that to the team.

ok - so I know you don't want the head filled, but this is what it looks like with the fill the same as the "paper" (and keeping the pure white outline -- which I haven't blurred / soft edge as Slowtiger suggested - but I do agree with his idea!)



other options include filling at less that 100% opacity - which will have the effect of dimming the (occluded) bg lines (also as in Slowtiger's suggestions)

[MrMiracle77]

Try this layer composition:

- Character Bone Layer, enable masking; hide all
-- Copy of Background texture, mask this layer
-- Other body lines, don't mask, don't add to mask
-- Face layer, add to mask, exclude strokes
-- Other body lines, don't mask, don't add to mask
- Background Lines
- Background Texture (paper, whiteboard)

So what this should do is make a replica of your Background Texture into a component of the character. But you need to assign the Background Texture to a bone in the Bone Layer that is independent of the rest of the character rigging. That way, the background texture doesn't move with the rest of the character.

Another important consideration with this rigging is character scale. Because if you scale the Bone Layer, the scale of the Background Copy will no longer match the original background texture. I'd recommend using camera zoom to ensure they continue to match.

[Víctor Paredes]

You can try the render styles in the project settings. You can change the fill color to background for every shape there.

[slowtiger]

So simple! Beats me. And it's there since at least v9, but I never used it.

[hayasidist]

You can try the render styles in the project settings. You can change the fill color to background for every shape there.

but that means there needs to be a fill for the renderer to change -- if (as in the OP) there's a closed shape but without fill, render with "fill style BG" notices the lack of (original) fill and doesn't "overwrite it" with BG colour.

[synthsin75]

You can try the render styles in the project settings. You can change the fill color to background for every shape there.

That wouldn't allow you to have a changing background color as a vector layer, if needed.

[slowtiger]

If you really need more than 1 BG colour in a scene you could easily render 2 versions with different colours and cut/dissolve in edit.

[Víctor Paredes]

Use white for every fill and black for every stroke. Then create a layer on top of the project with a colored rectangle and set the blending to multiply.
You will be able to animate the fill color of the entire project with it.