Character Animation News : Creative COW

Articles and Tutorials:

IK Character Animation: Walk to the Beat 2: The Walk Cycle
In this second tutorial on animating an IK character Andrew Devis shows us how to create and refine a walk cycle with our IK controlled character such that it walks in time with the music we had set up in the previous tutorial.
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IK Character Animation: Walk to the Beat 1: Finding the Beat
This tutorial is both a follow-on tutorial to Andrew's previous tutorials on IK controllers in After Effects and a helpful stand-alone tutorial showing how to define a beat range to use as a guide to animation in After Effects. To start with Andrew shows how to use a simple expression to deal with a potential problem of controllers scaling your objects. Then Andrew shows how to find and download sample music which can be used to base your animation on. He goes on to discuss the difficulty of matching frame rates with audio sample rate and then shows how to get a reasonably close 'loop' in both After Effects and especially in Audition.
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AE: Inverse Kinematic Character Animation PT 2
Standard character animation in After Effects uses a process called 'Forward Kinematics' in that we animate down a linked chain - for example, upper arm linked to forearm linked to hand. To get animation we need to move the items down the chain one at a time. Inverse Kinematics creates a link back up the chain such that moving the hand would also move the forearm and the upper arm without breaking that link. This is a simpler and easier way to control animation and is often used in 3D programs such as C4D and 3ds max etc. and allows us to control the animation for the complete chain through a single controller.
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AE: Inverse Kinematic Character Animation
Standard character animation in After Effects uses a process called 'Forward Kinematics' in that we animate down a linked chain - for example, upper arm linked to forearm linked to hand. To get animation we need to move the items down the chain one at a time. Inverse Kinematics creates a link back up the chain such that moving the hand would also move the forearm and the upper arm without breaking that link. This is a simpler and easier to control form of animation often used in 3D programs such as C4D and 3ds max etc. and allows us to control the animation for the complete chain through a single controller.
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Zombies Brought to Life For Warm Bodies
VFX company LOOK Effects ramped up a studio in Vancouver and created a new pipeline for character animation, to produce 85 shots of the Boneys - the most decayed, menacing zombies - in Warm Bodies, the new zom-rom-com based on the book of the same name. In addition to character animation, the company created a CG fly-through of a wasted city, blending with live action plates at each end of the sequence.
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Blogs:

Stereoscopic Cinema - A Discussion and Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
I just posted this in the Film History and Appreciation forum, but think this is a good blog entry as well. The title of this post, Stereoscopic Cinema, is meant to suggest that films like Avatar, The Hobbit and perhaps other well executed stereo films are in fact a new...
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Journal of the Whills
I am a fan of Star Wars. The original 1977 version was the first film I ever saw on the big screen in my life when I was 5 years old. It opened my imagination because everything this fantastical existed only as animation, so this movie just widened the limitation...
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Be sure to Check Out New Motion Graphics Book
My new motion graphics book is off to the presses! Almost all motion graphics artists today use After Effects, Photoshop, or Illustrator to some degree in their projects. But how do they decide which tool is best for the job and how can they utilize the various components in the...
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Podcasts:

IK Character Animation: Walk to the Beat 2: The Walk Cycle
In this second tutorial on animating an IK character Andrew Devis shows us how to create and refine a walk cycle with our IK controlled character such that it walks in time with the music we had set up in the previous tutorial.
Tune In Subscribe

more podcasts »

IK Character Animation: Walk to the Beat 1: Finding the Beat
This tutorial is both a follow-on tutorial to Andrew's previous tutorials on IK controllers in After Effects and a helpful stand-alone tutorial showing how to define a beat range to use as a guide to animation in After Effects.
Tune In Subscribe

more podcasts »

AE: Inverse Kinematic Character Animation PT 2
Standard character animation in After Effects uses a process called 'Forward Kinematics' in that we animate down a linked chain - for example, upper arm linked to forearm linked to hand. This lesson continues the previous on Inverse Kinematics.
Tune In Subscribe

more podcasts »

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News : Character Animation