Cosmopolitan Productions | Cosmo Resource Page | Mad in Pursuit  | Contact
 

Adobe Illustrator

This is an incredibly mysterious program. I can't figure out why it is so popular. Adobe seems to delight in hiding how it's supposed to work. The most obvious things, like chopping up a line (or "path"), seems to require a degree from MIT or the intuitive skills of a genius. But enough of my ranting. Illustrator makes "vector" drawings, which are compact and scalable, which is what you want to be working with in your animation software. Bitmaps get fuzzy if you blow them. Vector lines stay smooth and can be made increasingly smoother to make the file size even more compact.

You can avoid Scanning, Photoshop, and Streamline altogether if you like what you get by drawing directly into Illustrator. Some artists import a scanned drawing into Illustrator as a bitmap and use it as a guide (in its own layer) for hand-tracing directly in Illustrator.

Goal: Create a puppet -- a head or figure broken into parts that can be moved independently.

> Paste the drawing into the center of a new document. Magnify (CTL-+) to a workable size.

> Reduce number of points to keep animation efficient. Select all paths (CTL-A). Object > Path > Simplify... Curve Precision = 97%. This will remove a lot of points but still keep your basic shape. You can experiment with the precision % to get a look you like.

> Color. If you want to add color fills, keep everything selected -- Filter > Colors > Convert to RGB

> Original. To be on the safe side, rename the drawing layer to Original and copy it (drag to Layer icon). Lock and turn off visibility of Original.

> Puppet parts.

> Rename Original Copy to something like Lucy Still (your character's name)

> Create a new layer ("target layer")

> Select part to be animated. Be sure you have gotten both inner and outer paths. Move the tiny color square in the Lucy Still layer to the target layer

> Label and lock the new layer. Good labeling of each layer will help you be more efficient later in the process.

> Repeat this for each body part you want to animate. Faces: eyeballs on 1 layer; each eyebrow separately; lips/mouth, 1 or 2 layers. Closed eyes or different mouth shapes should be added here -- either directly drawn in or imported. Bodies: full animation needs separation at each joint -- hands, forearms, upper arms, feet, calves, thighs, head, neck, chest, hips.

> Color fill.

> Chose desired color with eyedropper tool

> For closed paths, select path and Fill

> For open paths, use Pencil Tool to draw a fill shape with no Stroke color. To make sure it doesn't obscure your outline, Object > Arrange > Send to Back

Your puppet is now ready to be imported into Adobe After Effects... a tutorial for another day.

<<<Back | 1 | 2

Cosmopolitan Productions | Cosmo Resource Page | Mad in Pursuit  | Contact