• Adobe After Effects

  Animation Problem

  Posted by Video Wizard on February 4, 2007 at 6:16 pm

  I am not new to After Effects but new to animating a cartoon like rat to run. Could someone answer these questions? I would greatly appreciate the help!

  I have the parts of a cartoon rat created in photoshop… head, torso, arms parts, leg parts and tail.

  1. Should I build the sequence in photoshop, layer by layer, then bring the layers into after effects?
  a. So far this doesn’t seem to be working well. The animation is choppy. I am using key frame assistant in after effects but the movement isn’t fluid.

  2. Should I bring the parts into after effects and manually move the parts and set key frames?
  a. This is fluid but seems like a lot of work. My biggest problem is parenting the parts of an arm and then trying to set the rotation anchor point so that the 3 parts of the arm all rotate as one unit at the shoulder point. Tips on that would be appreciated.

  3. Brian Maffitt showed a puppet like character in one of his older After Effects training series. All the joints were joined together using Inverse Kinematics. He could easily grab parts of the puppet, drag a foot, which caused other parts of the leg to move and set key frames in a very easy, fluid way. This looks like a great way to do this. What I need is an IK or Inverse Kinematics file to use and a web site to show me how to do this. I would love it if someone could help me with this! My cartoon rat is suppose to be running from my client’s net! So it’s a profile view, running left to right.

  Thanks to all of you seasoned veterans in advance for your help!

  Bill
  aka Video Wizard

  Video Wizard replied 19 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Mike Clasby

  February 4, 2007 at 11:00 pm

  If you want IK, a program like MoHo is great, but if you just want a running Rat, check out:

  Dan Ebberts demonstrates
  Animating a Walk-Cycle

  https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/ebberts_dan/layer_looping/index.html

  Your PhotoShop file if multi-layered (a layer for each body part)will work fine in AE, just import as a comp.Then get some footage of a rat running, so you can go frame by frame and see where the poses (keyframes) are. Or a book, like “Animator’s Survival Kit” by Richard Williams is great for human walk cycles an a little bit on 4 legged critters, but there must be books out there that show animal walk cycles.
• 

  Video Wizard

  February 5, 2007 at 4:42 pm

  I never meant to imply that it was obsolete. Even Brian Maffitt said that the complexity of the expressions used was beyond him. This file was given to him and he included it in that training series. But I don’t have that (the IK model file) and haven’t been successful in finding it. The first post to my question by yikesmikes, gave me a file of a walking woman that has been extremely helpful. But it’s not an IK model.

  Thanks for your thoughts and if you have any idea where I can find a model like that, please let me know.

  Thank you to yikesmikes too!!!

  Bill

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