While discussing my project, one of the tutors mentioned that After Effects has a puppet tool which allows manipulation of a digital puppet to create more natural movement. So to see whether this would be helpful in my Icarus animation, I investigated some tutorials to see what could be achieved using this tool. Thee are plenty of helpful videos around that show the basic capabilities.
However, there is one significant drawback to this tool. The cut out wings that I had created are made of three individual sections, which fold and overlap. If I were to scan the wings in and only animate digitally, the puppet tool would not allow the wings to unfold, only bend and stretch the original image. Consequently, I shall stick to my original plans to animate the wings and phoenix as cut outs, and use the puppet tool to manipulate Francois Xavier Fabre's painting The Death of Abel.
The advantage of the puppet tool is that you can give the illusion of joints and flesh, which would move and react in a certain way, to a digital object. The other transformations (position, scale, opacity and rotation) are just not helpful in some situations. In short, how it works is that you place pins on the areas of your character that would act as joints, and then animate these points along the timeline. You can also animate these points by hand as After Effects records the movements you make. There are also options to 'starch' or stiffen certain points so that they are less affected by the movement of the pins, but I'm not going to have time to experiment with this at the moment.
Having had a play around with this tool I can see the potential, but the character I produced with it was not particularly natural or convincing. I think that this a tool which requires more time and practice before I can include it in a project.
However, there is one significant drawback to this tool. The cut out wings that I had created are made of three individual sections, which fold and overlap. If I were to scan the wings in and only animate digitally, the puppet tool would not allow the wings to unfold, only bend and stretch the original image. Consequently, I shall stick to my original plans to animate the wings and phoenix as cut outs, and use the puppet tool to manipulate Francois Xavier Fabre's painting The Death of Abel.
The advantage of the puppet tool is that you can give the illusion of joints and flesh, which would move and react in a certain way, to a digital object. The other transformations (position, scale, opacity and rotation) are just not helpful in some situations. In short, how it works is that you place pins on the areas of your character that would act as joints, and then animate these points along the timeline. You can also animate these points by hand as After Effects records the movements you make. There are also options to 'starch' or stiffen certain points so that they are less affected by the movement of the pins, but I'm not going to have time to experiment with this at the moment.
Having had a play around with this tool I can see the potential, but the character I produced with it was not particularly natural or convincing. I think that this a tool which requires more time and practice before I can include it in a project.
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