As for « controlling switch layers with bones », I actually applied the « smooth joint for bone pair » script (which I think is only available in ASP 10 and 11) to every bitmap sublayer of a switch layer folder, not to the switch layer folder itself — which took my slow brains a while to find out.
To sum it up quickly :
1°) your switch layer is placed in a bone layer,
2°) the bone layer controls every switch sublayer (bitmaps), not the switch layer folder itself
3°) a single bone layer allows you to control a bunch of switch layers (or actually their sublayers), exactly the same way it would with regular bitmap / vector layers
4°) and it can include smart bones as well of course.
That little « tweak » implies a lot more work than rigging a single bitmap layer of course, or applying noise settings to a single vector layer, yet it helped me get a lot closer to the effect that I aimed — reproduce the natural « jiggle » of handmade, 12fps frame-by-frame animation, yet with distinct, controllable elements.
My former works, Strider2000, were indeed mainly drawn on a lightboard, melding backgrounds and foregrounds in a same hand-drawn image — very crafty, very satisfying, yet very long to make, and modifying a sequence implied re-drawing/re-scanning/re-sequencing it entirely, not to speak of colorization…
(There's more here)
The heavy aspects of the "lightboard method" have led me to concentrate on learning vectorial animation for over a year and a half now, still including handmade frame-to-frame elements in certain sequences at times, out of frustration : I was looking for a balance between both approaches, sometimes getting desperate not to be able to draw a lot more… that until ASP11 and its own « direct-to-screen », frame-by-frame option came out at last — you can’t imagine my relief.
As heavy as the above « switch layer method » may be however, it at least gives you control of every separate element and allows you to modify a sequence without having to redo it entirely. I now see it as a kind of comical / herculean transition between the old-school, « lightboard method » and the current « direct-to-screen » frame-by-frame one…
I did use the lightboard to animate the various gestures & positions of the yellow kid in the laundry sequence, nonetheless. And as for the blinking dude in the same washing machine sequence, his eyelids are simply bitmap layers animated with a smart bone, just the basic stuff. Anyway thanks for your feedback Strider2000!
