Many people have asked me how I setup my characters in Anime Studio, so here’s a tutorial. In my opinion, this is the easiest way to setup a character. See how many different body parts there are. By doing it this way, you can lay your character’s body parts where they’re supposed to go, and simply add the bones. You don’t have to worry about spreading the body parts out, as you may have seen in other tutorials.
Notice my switch layer named “mouths” has happy mouths and mad mouths inside of it. When I insert my voice snippets, I can choose which mouths I want for each snippet by assigning the Papagayo file to that specific mouth. This is handy if I need his expression to change in response to another character or action.
I didn’t open the two “hand” switch layer folders to show you what’s inside because I have about 30 different hands for each folder.
I did open the “eyes” switch layer to show you those. This character is pretty simple. I haven’t given him “winking eyes” or “twitching eyes,” because I haven’t needed them, yet. Most expressions can be achieved with the seven switch layers I have. I can adjust the points in the eyes with the translate tool if I need to.
It is possible to combine some of the features on this character, but I didn’t so let me explain. The collar and the shirt could have been one piece; the same with the head and hair. I didn’t do it this way because I have one file I call “Frankenstein’s monster” which contains multiple hair layers, clothing layers, body types, etc. To create a completely new character, all I have to do is choose which files I want to keep, and which ones I delete. Then I rename the file as my new character.
In the next article, I’ll split the character into his individual pieces and show you what they look like.
Bone rigging and character setup in Anime Studio
Is this on Anime Studio 6?
Niall,
Yes, it is Anime Studio 6.
-Eric
how do you add bones to drawings you dont import but do in the anime studio 6? how do you make files that accept those drawings of eyes and arms you make???
George,
See the Anime Studio bone rigging tutorial at http://www.cartoonlearning.com/2010/02/anime-studio-bone-rigging-tutorial/
You can rig whole .png or .jpeg layers to a single bone, or to multiple bones with varying degrees of influence. For more precision, you can also rig individual points of Anime Studio vector layers to individual bones. The Help Manual that came with Anime Studio is quite detailed regarding this process.
Your second question doesn’t make any sense to me. Try asking it another way, and I’ll try to answer it. What do you mean by “files?” Files in what program? Anime Studio Drawings or .png drawings?
-Eric
Thanks for your videos.
I was attempting to mimic your bone structure, with some success, but I could not figure out one set of bones. The smaller bones between the calf and the ankle are parent with what bone and which portion of the character?
Once again thank you for your work.
Donald Ross
@Donald The bone you’re referring to IS the ankle bone and its parent is the tibia (knee to ankle). The bottom one is the foot. I know it’s hard to tell what’s going on because you can’t actually see the ankle. It only shows up in karate kicks and similar poses. In most of my new characters I don’t even use it. I just extend the shoe up, and it works quite well.
-Eric
Never considered putting an ankle in to the character. I can see how this could be helpful in extending the foot. I will try to find the video with a karate kick in it and see the bone at work.
Thank You for your response and your site.
Donald
@Donald Don’t bother looking for a karate kick video of mine. I don’t post my videos here; they usually go on dvd’s.
-Eric
Hi, I’m new to computer animation but really want to learn. I followed your tutorial video on bone rigging but you stop before the entire character is rigged…and I can’t finish mine off because I’m such a beginner. Can you please do a part two to your rigging video, having the character fully rigged?. It would really help.
@John: I’ll see what I can do. If you follow this tutorial, http://www.cartoonlearning.com/?p=697 , you’ll have all the info you need to finish the character.
-Eric