AfterEffects Rambling_Part1

I hate when my blogging inner self can't share new things, for various reasons, but mostly because Alice eats up all my free time (and I can't draw). And other spare minutes are spent on either everyday tasks or college assigment.Speaking of which, I've been lately turning AfterEffects more often than Photoshop. That led to some AE orientated posts that I'll be posting on my college blog. However I felt like it could be a good idea to share it here too, maybe at least one soul will find my noob rambling useful :). Pardon simple copy-paste approach, I wrote below text purely to match module criteria.

So.. first post is about making a choice between Puppet Tool and Anchor Points.


I came to the point where I should start thinking about what tools can be used to animate. Initially I thought about using puppet tool in After Effects, however, while drawing puppets and props, I came to the conclusion that it'll be more efficient and easy to just use anchor points. So, whats the advantages of anchor points over the puppet tool?

 

First of all, puppet tool is great when used on a drawing as whole, as it creates rig/mesh - great for pieces that are not made from multiple parts. However my puppets and assets are made from many separate elements. Puppet tool can't be used across multiple layers, which is another advantage of anchor points. I can parent joints and create hierarchy (e.g. finger > wrist > forearm > arm). Anchor points can be moved at the end of each joint, which will be marked by a pin. By using rotate I'll be able to animate them. After a brief conversation with one of the tutors I also found out that anchor points moved in Photoshop will be transferred into AE so I don't have to do same job twice. Below is a screenshot showing how I parented shoe and knee to the leg and that change of rotate values makes whole leg move.

 

 Another thing i had to consider was whenever I should add sticks to the character arms or not. Problem with that is that I'll have to imitate the motion caused by it, which could be problematic and difficult to do in After Effects (oh and time consuming). Moreover I like the current aesthetic and with digital media I don't have to worry about 'is it even possible' thing ;).