Let's talk about layers!

Question

1. Head2. Body These layers order will make all the layers inside the Head will be on top of all layers inside the Body, and vice versa. Most of us, I believe, put the arms layers inside the Body parent layer. It's good until you want to make the character do something like screaming, or similiar terrified expressions, where the hands are on the cheek, which means you need to make the hands overlap the head, which is not possible since the arms are inside the Body. That's just one scenario/example. The question is, how do you achieve that kind of pose? You know, when you want to sometimes have some layers inside the Body parent layer to be able to overlap another layer(s) from the Head parent layer. Thank you Alank!Note:I know the one will answer this will be Alank, and no one else. That's how quiet this forum is.

alank99101739 · Accepted Answer

Thank you for your response!

I kinda getting it now.

Another challange:

How do you make two, or more, different characters do something like hugging? In South Park they do hugging. Well, actually many animations are. Where one side of the male character is overlapping the female character while the other side (e.g. arm) are behind the female character.

How do you achieve that? My mind already gave up by the way hahaha

That is an easy one to *answer*... and as you guessed, a pain to do in practice.

One puppet cannot be in front of and behind another puppet at the same time. So that leaves you with other options.

You can create a special puppet for the hug frames - has the artwork for both characters in the one puppet so you can get the depth right. The second character really just becomes more artwork in the primary puppet. Then keep the hugs short! ;-). (You carefully make the main puppets disappear for the duration of the hug (e.g. adjust opacity) then make the hug puppet visible at exactly the same spot.)

You can create a separate puppet for the arm in front - you just have to move it carefully to make it look natural.

Just remember if the end result looks good, then job done! I remember one blog on futurama describing how they used a mix of software and hand drawn scenes. Software made some scenes quicker to do, but key scenes they hand drew the frames still.

alank99101739 · Answer

Oooh, maybe I should not reply. Sometimes i wonder if others don't reply because i reply too quickly. Does that stifle discussion I wonder?

But depth management can be a pain. Rear hair on back of head has the same problem if it is meant to dangle behind the body.

Best answer I have seen is to have two sets of arms - one behind body, one in front. Then use triggers and swapset to show one set or the other. And yes, the ones in front on face are siblings to body layer (above head layer) as you say.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded