A problem with mouths, a kite, and color

[beautifuldaymonster]

First off, thanks to everybody who helped me with my last two issues. Because you showed me what to do, I am almost done with my first-ever animated cartoon short! Thanks again all. Here are the last three probably easy to solve problems blocking me from finishing my cartoon:

1. I've already animated the dude who does stuff in this cartoon, but I didn't add his mouth bones. Is it too late to do that with the cartoon almost finished? And if not, how do I go about installing mouth bones? (Because Papagayo isn't working)

2. I want to put a new character into the cartoon at around frame 174, animate it doing one simple move, then taking it out of the cartoon entirely at frame 390 (cartoon length is 450 frames). How do I do this?

3. I forgot to add color to my character before putting in his bones and animating him! Is it possible to add color back in but still have the colored portions continue to move while his bones do? How?

Help!!!!!!

PS, I will post this cartoon when it's done. It's kinda cheesy old school and stupid, but I would like you to see what you helped me with. Thanks for all answers!!

[Touched]

1. Can you explain what you mean about Papagayo not working?

2. You can set keyframes for a layer's visibility, on or off. Just set it to off for any time it shouldn't be visible. You only need to set it for the highest level layer that you want to disappear (assuming your characters are each attached to their own bone layer).

3. Judging from the screenshots you posted before, you're using PNGs for your character, so all you have to do is colour them in whatever other program you used to create them, and as long as you save them with the same name in the same place, the next time you open AS they'll be updated with colour.

[slowtiger]

Fortunately, all your problems can be solved.

First, make a duplicate of your file before you attempt any major rescueing operation. This way you have a backup in case something goes wrong beyond repair.

Second, all this repairing has to be done in frame 0 (zero)!

1. Mouth bones - is that really what you want, or do you mean a switch layer which is the more common solution?

You can add more bones even after already creating animation, but you have to create them far away from the existing stuff and put them in the right space with the relocation tool after you attached points to them, or else you might fuck up already existing movements.

2. Create a group layer or bone layer for your second character first, then create other layers inside that. Go to frame 1. Double-click the top-most layer of your second character and un-check the visibility checkbox. Go to the frame where you want to introduce that charcter and check that checkbox to visible. Go to ... uhm, you already know what to do.

It is also possible to place that top layer outside the visible area (the blue rectangle) and put it in place when needed. Use step keyframes here.

3. Should work, again, in frame 0, as long as you didn't do any color trick in animation.

[beautifuldaymonster]

Hi Slow Tiger, I'm going to try those tricks... unfortunately it's a kite that is the second character that moves... I built it but AS won't let me put bones in it now that I've built it... probably something stupid I did...

Touched, hello again! Papagayo just won't do anything. I downloaded it and opened it. When I launch it, it just sits there. It acts like a trial version or something. There is a Flintstone kinda looking mouth on the R side of the screen, but nothing I do makes it work. Papagayo won't let me start a NEW file either and that's just plain weird...

I'm going to fiddle around with this some more... if I can't make it work I'll come back crying to you guys. Thank you again for answering. Let's see what happens...

[beautifuldaymonster]

Touched, first let me thank you for that tip about adding the color (or colour!) to my PNG files. I did it in Photoshop and the AS character came back in color. Thank you!

Slowtiger, I tried the tip you showed me about adding a new vector layer for the kite character (that blows the first character off the screen). AS would not let me add bones to the kite, but I used the magnet function instead and it worked wonders. Also, I instructed AS to make the kite layer invisible starting at frame 1 and make it visible at the proper frame. That worked, so thank you again very much!

There are still two problems:

1) When I exported the animation as AVI and QT files to see how my work looked so far, the kite did not appear in the exported animation. This is weird because I can see it in the AS window. Just not in any exported animation.

2) Since Papagayo is not working, I have recorded the audio on cassette and am trying to use InstantMusic to convert it to digital. This is not working. Windows did not detect a new USB hardware as InstantMusic said it would. This is I think an InstantMusic problem and I will take it to their forums. But if anybody could direct me to a Papagayo forum where I could figure out or ask how to get Papagayo running, I would appreciate it much!

Thanks again Touched, Slowtiger and everyone who looked at my request to see if they could help me!

[beautifuldaymonster]

Hey guys, nevermind on the first problem. I built a switch folder and solved that problem. The last problem is at the top of the forum as a new topic now.

[Touched]

Hey, I'm sorry I didn't get back to you until now. I was having computer trouble, and am just now catching up on all the forum activity. I did see that Vern helped you with the switches and Papagayo, so I'll look for your other post.