Character Animator is where you create your recordings- the actual puppets should be made in either illustrator or photoshop. Once you've done the recordings/scenes in CA, you then open that file on After Effects to complete your story... you don't work in AE, then in CA- you first do your puppet work in CA, then open in AE. ... View more

What an amazing job you have done so far! I really enjoyed the trailer, super excited to see the finished product! I’ve been working on an animation series myself, for about a year as well, but you two have way outpaced my work! Thank you for sharing, I subscribed and am looking forward to seeing the first full episode! ... View more

I've gotten around the need to add fixed points on the feet to keep the puppet "grounded"... My puppets have two fixed points on the torso area, at about where the belly button would be (two fixed points on the sides of the puppet, where the "love handle" areas would be). This allows the puppet to still have a slight movement to the upper body (while following the camera actions) and at the same time keeping the legs/feet planted firmly on the ground. In this way I can arrange the legs/feet with draggers into any shapes I want (for example, a "Michael Jordan" jump into the air). Once I have the recording done as I need it, I then import it into After Affects where I have the puppet move around the screen as needed (to simulate the jumping). Character Animator is used for making the recordings of what would happen in your animation... like an actor on a green screen. Then, in AE you create the actual movement like when an actor on screen jumps into the air to fly- he or she isn't actually jumping, but the jumping/flying is done through AE special effects. ... View more

Oh dang it, I'm sorry I somehow forgot about this video tutorial. I religiously watch your new videos when they come out a few times at least, don't know how I forgot about this. Thank you again Dan! ... View more

UPDATE- solved question 2 of my original questions. I assigned the different head turner profiles keys, and when I removed the head tags from the heads the puppet started to walk again. The puppet, as a whole, was reading my left profile head and my right profile head as "views" for the walk cycle (I only had incorporated one walk cycle, so there should only be one "root" view and no left/right views... Removing the tags from the heads removed the other two views my puppet was looking for. Now i can use my independent head puppet on my profile/walk puppet body, thus saving time to build a new head. The puppet is still floating though, the I turn on the camera and I move around. If I press the right walk key then the puppet settles not place and walks fine. It's just when I'm not pressing the right key button is the puppet floating around as I look around too. So far, only solution I have, is to turn off the camera when beginning recording (thus the puppet is standing motionless), then press the right walk button, then start camera as puppet is walking (no floating happens with camera on as the puppet is walking). Still hoping to leave the camera on at all times without having puppet float, in case anyone has a solution. Thank you! ... View more

Thank you Dan, but I think I can wait for the next release... speaking of, any timeline of the it may come out? ... View more

Wow! Loved the work you put into it! I'm working on my own little animation series, and like you having to learn After Effects as well. It's hard to find pertinent tutorials that are made specifically for animations, so I give you props on doing such an amazing job with your AE integration for your characters! Congrats, very impressed! ... View more

I've taken sharing puppets to another level by sharing the "right-walking" body of a puppet, adding it to the "left-walking" puppet, reversing the body, and that's it. Now I have a right-walking and left-walking body with half the work. The issue I've seen is that if you change the original work file (illustrator file for me- name changes, etc.), it will cause an error in the puppet and lots of the rigging will be lost. I believe this has to do with the shared puppet parts being renamed or redone; I'm hoping it will get fixed in the upcoming updates. If it is fixed then you'll be able to create a counter left puppet. ... View more

Hello, was wondering what is the solution to this problem? I too created a puppet that had this same "internal error code". I created a right walking-puppet, and then made the body of the right-walking puppet sharable, then I used that sharable puppet to make a left-walking puppet. It was working great, but then I changed a few files/renamed a few things on the original illustrator file and CA gave me that error ( internal error code 1033274218:1293+1 attempt to index a nil value), and I lost most of the rigging with that error. Creating sharable puppets is an amazing, time-saving option for CA, but if I cannot change things in the original illustrator file without loosing all the rigging then it defeats the purpose... please share the solution if you have one. thank you! ... View more

This sequence works sometimes, and others not. It's just so odd that the word "copy" is added only to some layers and others not. Same thing happens when I copy and paste or duplicate. I can duplicate a large layer, with layers within, and some layers will add "copy" while others don't. There must be a valid reason to why this happens. ... View more

Thank you for the response, and after extensive testing I have found that your suggestion helped. When the first versions of CA were in use, the head turner behavior was included. So, as per the many tutorials available for CA, most people built their puppets with two main upper-level layers- the body and head. The head was setup with the following layers: "FRONTAL" or "FRONT", "RIGHT PROFILE", "RIGHT QUARTER", "LEFT PROFILE", LEFT QUARTER". This allows the head turner behavior to read, and tag, each head separately: PUPPET NAME -BODY      -LEFT ARM      -RIGHT ARM      -TORSO      -LEFT LEG      -RIGHT LEG -HEAD      -FRONT      -RIGHT PROFILE      -RIGHT QUARTER      -LEFT PROFILE      -LEFT QUARTER The problem is this- the new version of CA (version 6) looks for the same labels ("FRONTAL" or "FRONT", "RIGHT PROFILE", and "LEFT PROFILE"), and it does not differentiate whether they are for a HEAD label or for a FULL BODY label. Solution- we now need to create a new puppet with three FULL BODY profiles ("FRONTAL" or "FRONT", "RIGHT PROFILE", and "LEFT PROFILE", and within these profiles we need to further create layer for the body and for the head, and inside the head we need to add the head turner layers ("FRONTAL" or "FRONT", "RIGHT PROFILE", "RIGHT QUARTER", "LEFT PROFILE", LEFT QUARTER"): PUPPET NAME -FRONTAL     -BODY      -LEFT ARM      -RIGHT ARM      -TORSO      -LEFT LEG      -RIGHT LEG     -HEAD      -FRONT      -RIGHT PROFILE      -RIGHT QUARTER      -LEFT PROFILE      -LEFT QUARTER -RIGHT PROFILE    -BODY      -LEFT ARM      -RIGHT ARM      -TORSO      -LEFT LEG      -RIGHT LEG     -HEAD      -FRONT      -RIGHT PROFILE      -RIGHT QUARTER      -LEFT PROFILE      -LEFT QUARTER LEFT PROFILE     -BODY      -LEFT ARM      -RIGHT ARM      -TORSO      -LEFT LEG      -RIGHT LEG     -HEAD      -FRONT      -RIGHT PROFILE      -RIGHT QUARTER      -LEFT PROFILE      -LEFT QUARTER Of course, this gives us three times the work, but the results are 100% worth it. The ability to walk, left and right, or to face forward, is incredible. Add the head turner ability to each of those walking parameters and it becomes even more amazing. I suggest that you (ADOBE) differentiate the naming structure, for example LEFT PROFILE HEAD and LEFT PROFILE FULL BODY so that when we label and create our puppets CA will know how to separate and differentiate between the layers and structures. This might be a good idea to bring up in your upcoming tutorials and tips & tricks. Thank you so much, and as I continue to learn to use the app, I become a bigger and bigger fan of CA! ... View more

And leave "frontal" alone- that layer is labeled correctly. ... View more

I was having similar issues- rename your layers from "walk right" to "right profile" and from "walk left" to "left profile". These are the necessary names for CA to tag the profiles for which ones are use to walk. ... View more

Have you tried adding a fixed pin point to the feet of the puppet? ... View more

One other thing that may be causing this error is that puppet's name is the same as my previous puppet. The files are named differently, but the actual puppets used to rig have the same names. Therefore, I have two puppets available in CA- the original one that works fine and this new walking one (both have the same name for the actual puppet, but different file names). Could that be the problem? ... View more

Thank you very much! And yes, I think many Character Animator users would love some simple tutorials to learn how to incorporate their puppets/animations into AE. Looking forward to it! In the meantime I'll check out the sources you sent me, and once again thank you. ... View more

Thank you for your help! ... View more

Just read on another thread that this is a known bug in the app. ... View more

I had this same problem, and I even tried to create a large, transparent block around my character in Illustrator hoping that it would keep the puppet in a "bounding box" in Character Animator, but that didn't help either. Re-rigging a body isn't too time consuming, as much as setting up the head. I though of maybe making one puppet the head and the other the body but that doesn't make sense either... it would be too difficult to coordinate between the two. Hopefully this bug is fixed in the next version, thank you! ... View more

Ok, it happened again. I changed some of the original AI files and again something happened- the arms moved and are not aligned with he puppet. How can I repair this or how can I make changes in AI that won't affect the puppet? I don't want to have to re-tag everything over and over again. ... View more

I ended up re-tagging all the structures, but if anyone knows a workaround please let me know. Thanks! ... View more