What is possible?

[chrisn14887705]

Hi everybody, I'm new to the forum and quite new to Character Animator (but I've seen all the youtube videos about it).

I have a plan that looks a bit impossible, but that just makes it more fun to do.
I want to make a character that is able to fight, turn around smoothly, use a sword correctly and naturally, in a nice looking and detailed drawing style. It will be a character rig, but it should look as good as a good animé, or even better. I thought I would just start with a basic sketch, then rig everything, and then replace the sketches by real artwork which I will base on what is best according to the way everything is rigged.

If you guys have ideas, I'd like to hear them, because for example I have no idea how to make him use a sword at every different angle. I'm also looking for a way to turn his head and body smoothly, with extra frames between the standard seven positions. Maybe I could use key triggers for every position and find a way to let him go to different positions back and forth. fe: Body is at position 1. I press 7. It cycles 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Now it is at seven. If I press 4, I want to go it like 7,6,5,4. But if I want to go from 1 to 4, I want it to go 1,2,3,4. So there can't really be one layer cycle per key, which is a problem that we'll be solving, hopefully.

Hope you guys like what I'm doing, I'll show the character to you when it's finished (in a really far future).

Chris

[oksamurai]

Sounds ambitious and cool!

I agree that starting with a basic prototype is the way to go. I would just use simple shapes and see if you can get the structure working. I do this a lot - in the December Tips video you can see this in the guitar example for the community spotlight.

Note that adding a lot of cycle layers between turns could lead to super slow performance and large file sizes, especially if you want to keep all the functionality of the head, arms, dangle, etc. Feel free to prototype it, but my guess is this is going to be too complex for a first project. You might want to experiment with stuff like face parallax, which could help make the transitions feel more fluid with more inbetween eye/nose motion.

[chrisn14887705]

Thanks for the reply! I appreciate that so much!

I'll try the face parallax, I let you know when I'm finished or if I need some help.

Chris