Animation and Video Life

I'm not known for my super fast character design for Cartoon Animator. It's why I constantly look for short cuts in rigging characters because I get bored or distract... squirrel! In this second post on rigging my first, complete G3-SVG vector character I'll run you through how I take my initial, 'inked' using Inkscape design, from part 1 of this series , and break it up into the key sprite body parts. Marking the Joints The main image for this post at the top of the article is a little deceptive as it shows a composite of my, mostly, complete character divided in half so you can see the underlying vector lines - totally for effect to create an interesting image. Imagine this image is still just the half image I traced and colored from last time. The next step is to create a joint layer and mark where all my joints (i.e. bone points) will be with my semi-transparent circular crosshairs that you can see in the image. But only on one side, remember. All of this will b...

D esigning original characters for Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is a relatively easy process because, for the most part, you only really need one final, front facing image of your character design in a T-pose. Using that pose as a base, you can build out a turn-able head (with perhaps a few additional sprites depending upon your needs), and a three quarter facing body, which is enough to allow the character to walk across the stage without looking weird. In what will be a series of posts, I thought you may find it interesting to go behind the scenes as I design and rig a character for Cartoon Animator from the very beginning stage to a fully rigged G3-SVG character. Choosing a Design The character I'm creating is a bikini clad, blonde haired, woman, not just for the sake of drawing a scantily clad woman. Cartoon Animator's new Color Management tools allows you to create clothing systems for your characters where items can be added or removed just by changing color opacity....