IBIS paint X character on Animate

[parthibaraj]

I am hiring an artist who makes his characters on IBIS paint X . Can that character be used in Adobe Animate to create animation ?

[rayek.elfin]

It depends. If you want to use it as a segmented character all parts must be painted on separate individual layers. I checked, and it seems IBIS can export layered PSD files. But I have no idea what resolution is used, not what kind of character drawings you intend to animate.

Do you have an example?

[parthibaraj]

[rayek.elfin]

That looks good!

As for animating the character, you have several options/possibilities:

• if the artist used separated layers for each animatable part (the head, neck, upper arms, lower arms, hands, eyes, mouth, upper body, legs, feet, accessories/clothing) you can import these parts in Animate and build a segmented puppet.
  In this case forget about Animate's built-in puppet tools: those are utterly incapable and riddled with bugs for production work. Instead, download the free Flanimate character rigging tools, and use those:
  https://flash-powertools.com/
  
  Even in this case you will have to have different versions of the hands, eyes, mouth (expresssions and talking) and so on to animate it properly. And if you need a side or 3/4 view of the character, the character must be drawn that way as well.
  
  You may need several rigs (puppets) for various purposes and switch between them.
• if the artist drew this in one layer or did use layers but not with animated puppets in mind, you will have to redraw the character. Ideally as vector in this case directly in Animate or Illustrator. This is actually preferable for this art style. Seeing that this is a relatively straightforward art style and 'compatible' with Animate's vector style, that would take an afternoon, or so.
• Resolution is also important. I am unsure whether IBIS is vector based or not? If it is bitmap, and this is the final output, then the resolution is too low for regular HD 1920x1080p. It is also not possible to zoom into the character's face without losing fidelity. Again, manual conversion to a vector version may be a requirement.

PS Animate CC is rather buggy and slow to work with nowadays, unfortunately. If you have time to investigate alternative pipelines, consider checking out Moho Pro, ToonBoom Harmony premium, or Blender for 2d puppet animation, and do a character test with each.

[parthibaraj]

THanks a lot for detailed explanation