I Need Help!

[Spirit-Pal Cal]

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for advice on a project I'm doing for a friend. He needs me to animate a character he's made on Photoshop and give it a head nod type of movement to as if he is nodding his head to the beat of a song that he's making. He sent me the files and I have been trying to work on it for the past couple of days but I have been struggling extremely. When I first upload the file the whole picture including the background moves simultaneously. When I get rid of the background all together I can't just get the head to move on its own. So my question is how do I get the head moving on its own and stop the body and neck from moving as well because it won't stay put? Also is this even a job for character animator or should I go to animate cc to do a project like this? I'm new to the whole animation thing so I thought this would be a good starter project.

Here is the file:

[alank99101739]

I had a look - because there is a thick neck and solid hair, it is a little tricky. Not very tricky, but the question is what effect are you after. Character Animator is designed for this sort of thing, but you have choices which impact how the final result looks.

For example, do you want the head to pivot? Or the neck to bend a bit without disorting the face shape? How do you want the rear hear to look?

I am going to guess the best look for this puppet will be if the rear hair moves independently to the shoulders. The Face you could make independent so it swivels, or you could make it bend the neck to cope (and you put sticks along the jawline in Character Animator to stop the face itself from distorting). Both work, they just look different.

Here is an example where I rotated the head a bit. Guaranteed zero distortion of the face. I just did this in Photoshop, but the idea is you move the eyebrows into the head layer so they are part of the head, rename "Head" to "+Head" which tells Character Animator that the Head layer should be independent, then you need to extend the neck artwork up behind the head. (when the head moves you dont want to see a gap behind it) Finally, you change the "origin" inside CH of the head (click on Head layer, drag the origin point) - this is where the head will rotate from. I did the rotation up towards the ear so the ear stayed still but the chin rotated downwards. The Neck artwork also needs to extend up behind the head to cover where you want the rotation point of the Head layer so it can "attach" to the rest of the body.

I cannot get CH to start right now for some strange reason, but hopefully the above will help you get started.

[Spirit-Pal Cal]

Wow, thank you very much this was exactly the advice and help I needed! And yes it is enough to get me started I appreciate it.