Animating a character sitting at a bar (arms on the bar...)

[one.market]

Is it possible to have a character sitting at a bar and animate both the body and the arms. The challenge is that the lower part of the bottom is not visible because the character is behind the bar (no problem so far...) but the arms are on resting on the top of the bar. I know you could pin the elbows to the bar but the challenge is that the arms are in front of the bar and the body is behind.

Is there a way to resolve this?

[jawdoe]

does it work if you move the bar image in the timeline above the puppet..so the elbows are still pinned but its sitting just behind the bar and you and move arms so they look like they are resting ontop?

[one.market]

Thanks for the reply. See the image attached. The challenge as I see it is their arms are on top of the counter and their bodies are behind it. Not sure how to manage this.

[jawdoe]

cool scene!

Hmmm thinking off the top of my head..you might have make a cycle behaviour for it.

So draw the animation sequence of the arm which starts below the table then moves up to the top and rests with the beer in his hand on the table.

However you might have to draw a section (so last few layers have the table drawn onto the bottom of the arm) of the table that is under the arm which will look like it is resting above the table..that way when you trigger the cycle it will look as if the arm is above the table. (it will overlay the table with the arm with table drawn on it). 

Hoping this make sense hahaa.

[one.market]

Ya, I was thinking I might have to attach the table top to the elbow - like it is part of the body and then pin them both in place. This seems like a really complicated hack. I'm trying to figure out if there's a better /easier way to do this.

[alank99101739]

Most common solution I have seen is to insert bar (or desk in other posts) as independent layer as part of body (think of it like a dress in front of legs). Best way seems to be to attach desk at bottom to feet of puppet, then use sticks and pins so feet do not move, then bar does not move.

Try searching forums for "desk" and you might find similar threads with longer discussions.

[alank99101739]

If body does not need to move, it is simpler. Just chop body off and put in front of bar. Otherwise you probably need to chop bar into two sections (one per character)

[one.market]

AlanK - thanks for that. I think that might be the solution:

Draw your character as if they are 'wearing' the bar top - in efffect a big brown skirt. Attach that to static/pinned legs. This way the arms can move freely over the 'skirt' but the arms are still attached to the rest of the body. I can then use a static overlay in post to cover the bottom third of the entire frame.

And yes, I'll be animating the two characters separately.

thanks - hopefully that does the trick.

[k_oshiro]

I converted Japanese to English with translation software.

It is difficult to place and fix an object between the body and the arm.
I uploaded a sample puppet to Dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8u5abxhnw59i1u5/Puppet_Object_sample.puppet?dl=0

in this case,
1) The object does not have an independent crown.
2) Use the stick tool to harden the objects you do not want to move.
3) Attach a fixed tag.

Although it is in Japanese, I also uploaded a commentary video on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/eDfPd2dN_YY
https://youtu.be/dgKTC9bpSM8

please refer.
Thank you.

[one.market]

そのデモに感謝します-これが可能であることを知っておくのは良いことです