• Adobe After Effects

  cutout character animation

  Posted by Zac on December 21, 2005 at 6:43 pm

  i am looking for inspiration on a personal project for my daughter. I want to do the menus of her birthday DVD in a style where the face is really hers cut out but the body and surroundings are make up of fabric shapes. Does it make sense? I have been looking for examples i can’t seem to find any. I have seen it a ton before but of course when you are looking you can’t find anything. If anybody has links to examples or a studio that is known for this work i would appreciate it.

  Mike Clasby replied 20 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Mike Clasby

  December 22, 2005 at 7:12 pm

  You might try this for a quick walking fabric daughter.

  I opened Dan Ebbert’s “Animating a Walk Cycle”.

  Click on Dan’s head at the top, then scroll down.
  or
  https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/ebberts_dan/layer_looping/index.html

  I opened the “model comp”.
  Import your fabrics (best into a new folder). Then drag one of the fabrics down below the layer you want to turn into fabric.
  In the “modes column” change the TrkMat to “Alpha Matte “r arm”. You now have a fabric arm, the fabric stays put underneath and we see different parts of the pattern as the arm swings (kinda cool), if you want the fabric to stay frozen to the arm as the am moves simply parent the fabric layer to the “r arm ” layer.

  Then for the head, drop in a pic or video(with transparency or mask it) of the head above the torso, move the anchor point to the center of the head, and parent it to the torso.

  Fini, walking fabric daughter.

  This is a profile view, but can be done, face-on or 3/4, but you’ll have to generate you own body parts in Illustrator, or Photoshop. I did that for a Bigfoot character and it’ not bad once you get the hang of it, Dan’s Tutorial shows the way.

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