Did you know you can rotate your puppet’s hands in Adobe Character Animator? You can also break your puppet into modular pieces, to share common assets and save time. From mouth shapes to character hands, I have spent 15 years rigging characters for some of the world’s most beloved video games, and that requires clever solutions! In this video, I quickly cover some of my Adobe Character Animator tips and tricks for managing a puppet.
Grif covers some useful tricks for Character Animator, when starting a new character starting from Photoshop layers. The video above shows a breakdown of the layers in a new puppet, as well as Mouth Shapes, the side Views, and scaling. If you need more of a beginning tutorial, you can look into this video tutorial by Okay Samurai as well.
As you start, try to make sure you draw the art and name layers appropriately, since renaming can mess up your puppet a bit. Grouping layers is therefore very important, because you can use the “Layer Picker” on any Group to help cycle through all of the art within that Group using “Index Offset.” In your Control Panel> Layout, you can add each Index Offset option to help you control the different art shapes, even grouping them together to help with continuity. Grif shows an example of this process with separate hand poses.
In the More Club, we dive even deeper into what’s possible in Character Animator. I’m talking about those little Adobe CH tips and hacks that you won’t find in most YouTube tutorials. I will be posting some excerpts from the More Club on YouTube so you can pick up some workflow enhancements, but club members get exclusive looks into the process and can ask me questions about my process and tools.
If you want even more, you can join the More Club where Grif and guests do talks and lessons on Discord.
Be sure to sign up for notifications to get in on the behind-the-scenes action. You will also get access to free assets you can use in your own projects!
While I always want to share these Adobe Character Animator tips, recently I started pushing my VTuber avatars into the next dimension. Check out the human in this Rokoko Smart Suit! This is the future of VTubing, friends, and I will take you with me on this journey. Stay tuned for future articles where I talk more about this exciting motion capture technology!
Not ready to start making your own puppet with these Adobe Character Animator tips?
If you have some aptitude for drawing, you can use a layered drawing program like Photoshop to arrange your art in movable layers. You may not be at that point yet though, and that’s no problemo– you can use this free customizable Floof Puppet to make a puffy little avatar, or browse my other fine wares in the Shop.
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What an incredibly generous toolbox for all internet denizens. Thank you GrifNMore website.