[Benjamin Arthur]

Thanks so much! I’m still foggy on how to use timeToFrames and framesToTime correctly – I better hit the books!

Very much appreciated –

[Benjamin Arthur]

If your animation is moving correctly without time posterization, The easiest way would be to precompose these elements, then lower the frame rate to something that approximates stop motion. If you could clarify what you’re working with, I’d have an easier time understanding – I’m not clear if you’re using a motion path combined with a wiggle, or you’re just using a wiggle.

[Benjamin Arthur]

I’d call this a paper cut-out style of animation, where everything is 2D layers being manipulated in 3D space. It’s being combined with a kind of mechanical style, they took care to show the strings and connected elements to give it a feeling of an old style machine from an arcade or mechanical museum.

[Benjamin Arthur]

I was looking at DUIK for possible ways to create the movement I wanted, but I found Rubberize It! by Ebberts and Zucker to be pretty fantastic at creating some nice bouncy physics with minimal effort. My challenge now is finding an easier way to place those 6 nulls than keyframing every position – I can’t place the whiskers in the same comp that I’m using to time-remap my lip sync animation, since I’m using it in a non-liner fashion, they wouldn’t move naturalistically. So I basically need to reference the location of a null within a time remapped comp, with respect to the time-remapped keyframes.

[Benjamin Arthur]

Definitely a challenge! No 3d layers, it’s all 2d animation combining photoshop layers with hand-drawn animation. My current approach is creating visual tracking points on a second version of the referenced time-remapped mouth layer. I can then mirror the time remap keyframes, and then track each of the 6 dots individually to my whisker nulls.

It’s not as elegant a solution as I’d like though, it would be much easier if I could somehow connect the location of a null outside the time remapped layer to the location of a null within it (with respect to the non-liner time remapped keyframes).

[Benjamin Arthur]

So there’s no real way other than manually to link an image up to the write-on’s timing. That’s surprising, I thought I was missing something obvious, I thought it would be a simple link to the speed/duration or something.

[Benjamin Arthur]

What I’m looking for is a way to link the paint write-on directly to an image (pencil) so that whatever I paint gets linked to the tip of the pencil, following the speed and timing of the real-time drawing.

[Benjamin Arthur]

Ahh, very cool, thank you Todd. It still seems odd that there is no way to do this directly, as drawing in the motion sketch makes drawing difficult and eliminates the ability to control brush size via the wacom tablet. I’m settling for a version of Aharon’s tutorial, revealing the drawing I did in after effects using a reversed eraser effect to try to replicate the hand-drawn timing. Thanks again for the help.

[Benjamin Arthur]

In this he’s attaching the image to a mask, rather than an actual written write-on effect – I want my image to follow the timing of my wacom strokes like the brush does within after effects – not just the path.