![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Haven't done much with the hands yet. They look kind a funky. I drew them freehand in Anime Studio at the start and never touched since then, was too focused on the body and head. The finger tips are too pointy and claw like... and they don't look natural, kind of stiff and weird. I need to do individual shapes for fingers with some kind of shading to show finger overlap and delineation. Haven't decided if I want to do simple switch hands or use bones for fingers. Bones are nice but.... simple switches are faster and easier to animate. What I really need to do is go back to photoshop and sketch a bunch of hand designs with the wacom. I can never get hands right just drawing in Anime Studio from scratch. I usually sketch on paper first. I am thinking of a specific "hand style" to match the character. A sort of "squared stubby" type of finger, something fairly simple.
I also still have to do phonemes! I am hoping I can simply do a front and side view of the phonemes and move and scale during turns. The simple less extreme turns just past 3/4 will work with just front view and some layer and point tweaking. I want to add some additional smart bone tweaks to add additional emotions onto the canned phoneme switches. I've seen this done on the forum with smart bones.
The tough part is full side views. For example on the head turn the hair on either side has to go behind the head depending on the turn direction. I hated the "jump" you get when something suddenly goes behind another layer, so for the hair I would squish one side to "line up" with the side of the head over a few frames THEN have the hair go behind the head layer. I scale points of one side of the hair horizontally to zero, then use the "Bend Points" tool to "curve" the "line" of squished points to match up with the side of the head before moving the layer behind the head. This gives a nice animated effect of the hair turning without a horrific "jump" when layer order changes. Works great but is kind of a pain in the arse. I also hate squishing points to 0 for some reason. It works but I just don't like doing it for some reason... feels like a lazy technique, like there should be a better way.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Thanks for the comments on the turn working okay. I have to go back in and make that process easier to animate. It takes a lot of crazy keys to go from "side front' to "side back" to have him turn around completely. I think I could probably put that into a smart bone action. It may not be used a lot. The reason it's a pain is that the side to side turn for the front and back is "opposite" directions (switch layer). For about 5-10 frames I have keys on every frame to do the turn.
The frustrating part is not being able to put layer order in the SB actions. SB layer order sort of locks everything down. I can do most of the turning with SB's but layer ordering still needs to be done in the main timeline.
I am thinking maybe I could do layer order with specific smart bones for different configurations. Instead of having layer order in the turn, put the ordering in another SB with specific ordering combinations on set keys. There isn't an unlimited combination of layer ordering needed. It's basically forearms over body, forearm and bicep over body etc etc. I could put those different combos into a smart bone and just use "step" keys to pick the right layer order in specific spots. This would also allow me to turn specific masking layers on and off for the shoulder. I created alternate masking for some of the turns. It works great but I have been keying layer visibility in the main time line.
Anyway, just posting my thought process on this stuff.