[Mike Derk]

I am parenting the head to the torso, but essentially what I’m revealing — I think — is a problem with my workflow.

(This will answer your question in the other thread about my minute adjustments.)

All of the frames are of a stick figure, and he leaves little footprints behind him. Because they’re all drawn freehand and not very precisely, none of the cropped photoshop images are the same size, so the torso isn’t in the same place every time when it’s imported into AE.

In order to parent the head to the torso (head and body are two different sets of images), I moved the anchor point on the torso comp — on each frame, because they’re all different. Then I parent the head to the anchor point. So far so good.

But, this only lasts six frames — each frame of the walking cycle.

If I add a “loopOut()” expression here to both the torso walking and the head, it’s great. It all moves together.

But, the walking looks herky-jerky because it’s too fast. So, when I go to slow it down, that’s when I end up with problems.

Roving keyframes tend to put the head in an odd place every other frame (where they’re interpolated).

I think I have a simple workflow solution: parent the head and the torso in a comp. Bring that composition into my final — and slow it down there: there won’t be any mismatch with interpolation this way.

Or, redraw things so that the “neck” is always in the same place, and maybe don’t crop the layers when I bring them from PS to AE. It’s a level of carefulness that goes against the style of the drawing, but really, could it be that hard? I don’t think so. I new to this, so I’m learning workflow by casually making mistake after mistake. No big deal.

But, I still have that one last question: when I set up a loopOut() cycle, and want to move the keyframes to adjust the speed it plays, it seems to look best when it’s a multiple of the number of frames in the loop. In my case, 6 frames looks best at 12 frames or half-speed. Making it 11 frames gives me on “hiccough.”

So, is there a way to see just how far apart two keyframes are, or a way to move a keyframe by inputing a value instead of dragging it?

Mike

PS. I feel like I owe you all a good end product now.

[Mike Derk]

Well, I have half of an answer: I dragged the keyframes (set up initially by loopOut) apart, and it slowed the speed nicely. (Although, I couldn’t find any indicator of how far apart the keyframes actually were, and had to count them manually… there must be something that measures the distance between two keyframes, right?)

Then for everything that had to match to that loop-cycle, I changed the keyframes to rove across time.

However, this wasn’t entirely accurate. Each “walking” frame is now two frames long, but the head interpolates a position, so it is no longer on the neck. I guess what I’d like is hold keyframes that rove across time…

So, I’m going to say I don’t have a full solution yet.

[Mike Derk]

I’ve previously imported paths of arrows from Illustrator. You might see if that does the trick.

Added bonus: you can manipulate the paths in AE.

[Mike Derk]

Thanks!

[Mike Derk]

Wow, I was going to come on and ask just this exact question. And, by the way, I understand nothing in your expressions except the “modular function”.

So, here is my follow-on question: how would I alter the code if I wanted each individual drawing to play for 2 or 3 frames. For my purposes, playing only 1 frame is a bit fast.

Thanks,

Mike

[Mike Derk]

I’m not that expert in AE, so your question is beyond me too.

However, I would probably never have the wall go to 100% see-through (0% opacity). I would let it hover around 5% (or whatever looks good) so that the texture you apply to the wall to make it look 3D never goes away.

If you want to remove the wall 100%, and have some texture around the hole, you could use “bevel” (but this would require that: 1) you do your initial effect; 2) you hide the layer with the wall; 3) replace that layer with an identical layer with a hole pre-cut in it, and apply the bevel to that.)

To be honest, I don’t think it’s necessary since we’re seeing through a wall magically, and not actually putting a hole through the wall.

Sorry for the late response.

[Mike Derk]

I would use a mask with a radial gradient to affect the opacity of the wall (and see through to the other side). The detail that I would want to spend the most time on would be the flickering of the matchlight. Maybe wiggle?

[Mike Derk]

Have you thought about moving the generator to spell out the letters, and turning the gravity to zero so the particles won’t move?

[Mike Derk]

I think the notion of what I was keyframing, or rather how the keyframes were mapping onto the original time, was lost on me. It’s not that it’s more abstract that the X and Y dimensions, it’s just that it’s not as easy to visualize (for me). I was surprised that the grapher didn’t show the loop (as a series of angled lines)… it does it all under the hood, so to speak.

Anyway, I’m halfway up that learning curve, and moving onto another one…

[Mike Derk]

Maybe the dark blue needs to have white or light blue edges to separate it from the background?