Hello. My name is TurtleArmyJess and welcome back
to another Synfig Studio animation tutorial. Today, I’m going to show you how I build
the head of a character model and some basic head movements. This is the third video in my tutorial series,
you may want to watch the other ones first if you don’t already have some experience
in Synfig. Links are in description along with some timestamps
if you want to skip around. So today I’m going to build a model of a
character’s head and shoulders, specifically Caduceus from Critical Role. I’m first going to make a list of every
action I want him to do, then I’ll build the model, and finally I’ll go over how
I animate each of the actions. I want his head to be able to bob and tilt
a bit. I want his large ears to wiggle. I also want him to blink and have his eyes
move around. In addition to his eyes looking side to side,
I also want his entire head to turn. Lastly, I want his expression to change into
a smile. To put all of these things together in an
example, I’m going to animate a complete gif in which. Caduceus watches a bumblebee fly past him,
he smiles, and then says “Hello Bees”. I won’t cover lip sync in this video, but
it will be the subject of my next video , let’s get started. I’m going to fast forward a bit through
the drawing process to save some time, I’m not going to list every single step I do,
just the steps that I find notable. So the first thing I did was save my project. Always save often. The second thing I did was import my reference
file. This allows me to get some help picking colors
and I don’t have to switch between screens. My process is to kind of throw all of my shapes
onto the canvas and then manipulate them until they look right. So this art is going to look like garbage
at the start, but it will get better. Every shape I’ve drawn so far has been with
either the circle tool or the draw tool, with the blend method set to composite. The exceptions are the inner ears, the shaved
portion of his head, and his facial hair. I set those blend methods to “Onto” so
I don’t have to spend a lot of time making sure the inner shapes line up with the edges
of the outer shapes. On the shaved regions I’ve also lowered
the opacity a bit. Out of all of my shapes, his wavy hair in
the front is the most complicated. I know that I’m going to have his head turning,
which means that his hair will also have to move. It’s easier to move and keep track of shapes
with fewer points, so my goal is to have the shape I want while using the fewest number
of handles. To put that gradient color in his eye, I grouped
together the iris and highlight, then added a gradient over the iris with the gradient’s
blending set to “Onto”. I’m going to save myself as much time as
I can by using duplicating and mirroring all the shapes that I want to be symmetrical. I’m using a stretch layer to flip his ear
and I’m using the mirror tool for the tops of his eyes and eyebrows. Ok, now that all the basic shapes are here,
I’m going to start adding in the structures I need to do my animations. I won’t be moving anything below his head,
so I’m going to group together every layer from his torso, shoulders and neck. I’m also going to make the hair behind his
head it’s own group. Next I’m going to group together everything in his
head You can toggle your visible layers with the
check boxes in the layers panel. I like to switch these on and off just to
make sure that I’ve included every layer needed in that group. I have this group with every layer in his
head together, I’m going to add a translate layer and a rotation layer inside the group
at the top of the organization. If you have both translate and rotation layers
affecting the same area, make sure the translate layer is always on top. I can then adjust these layers a bit to make
sure they’re working. I’m going to copy-paste both the translate
and rotation layers into that hair group behind his head. To wiggle the ears, group all the layers of
the ear together, then add a rotation layer inside the group as the top layer. I want his eyes to follow or track the butterfly,
so I’m going to add a translate layer to each iris. I’m adding the translate layer inside the
iris group that I made while adding the gradient. I’m going to rearrange my layers a bit, I want to make sure that the top of the eye,
this line, is the layer directly above the iris group. Between these two layers, I’m going to add
a region for his eyelid. I’m making the region his skin tone and
setting the blending to “Onto”. I usually have 4 handles, I keep the top two
in position and never move them. The bottom two I will split the tangents to
make a curve so it exactly follows the top of the eye. When I start animating, I’ll move this top
of the eye down. As this black line moves, I’ll move the
eyelid with the same timing. I’m going to have Caduceus look from a 45
degree angle to directly facing the camera. His face is going to move across his head and I want all of
his face to be moving at the same time. It would look really bad if I messed up the
timing and his eyes were moving faster than his mouth. I’m going to group his entire face and add
a translate layer to the top. For his expression change, I want him to go
from neutral to a smile, so the corners of his mouth are going to curl up. He doesn’t need anything extra for that. Lastly I’m going to put the whole character
into one group so he’s easier to copy-paste. Ok, that is all of the actions I want him
to do. I’m going to quickly draw a bee for him
to watch and a flower for the bee to land on. Just like I mentioned in my first tutorial,
I’m saving this synfig project as one frame, because this is my reference file. When I want to animate, I’m going to make
a new file and copy paste these models into it. I’m going to save my file first and close my other project up here, so I don’t have too many windows open. Synfig doesn’t crash on me a lot, but when
it does happen, it’s usually while I’m animating, so save often. The bee is the easiest to animate and it’s
what caduceus is going to be focusing on, so I’m going to start with the bee. With animate mode on, I’m going to move
the bee around at a few different points in the timeline. Essentially, bee is on the right, bee is in
the middle, bee lands on the flower. I’m going to throw a keyframe on the beginning
and end of the bee’s movement So I’m going to animate the head turn first. Making sure my two keyframe buttons are locked
I’m going to select the first keyframe, and adjust Caduceus until he’s looking at
the bee. I’ll shift his whole face in that direction,
his right ear is going to come towards the viewer a little, and his left ear is going
to move back slightly. Lastly I’ll adjust his hair. Ok, the turn is done, next I’ll move his
eyes a bit so that he’s watching the bee. This is my favorite part of animating, because
I have to move the eyes one at a time and there’s always a few frames of funny faces
before I’m done. Something I want to do to make the animation
feel more realistic is to adjust the timing of the head turn and the eyes. When people tend to look at things, their
eyes will generally move faster than the head. The eyes will lead the head turn. Also I want to feel like he’s responding
to and following the bee. When he’s moving in sync, it seems like
he knows what the bee is gonna do ahead of time. I hope that makes sense. So I’m going to select the folder for his
character group. This two yellow waypoints here represent every
movement within this group, so all of the animation I just did. I’ll drag the start a few frames later in the timeline. Then I’m going to select each translate
layer for his eyes and make sure that the movement of the eyes starts faster than the turn of
the head. To check my work, I’m going to use the ‘preview’
function, under file, preview, keep it at a low quality, and leave the frames at 12
frames per second, this is just to check my overall timing. This preview function generates quickly and
is easier to check then fully rendering your animation each time. Just don’t hit the play button until the
whole thing is done rendering. Ok after the bee lands, he’s going to look
at it for a few frames, maybe 6 frames, a half second is a good pause. I’ll add another keyframe at the end of
the pause and then animate the blink. A normal blink has the eyelids closing for
2 frames, resting for 1 frame, and then 3 frames of opening. However, Caduceus is really calm and chill
character, so I imagine he blinks slower. I’ll give him 4 frames to close, 2 frames
of closed eyes, and 6 frames of opening. I’m also going to take every chance I get
to duplicate my waypoints to save time. Finally, while he’s blinking, I’m going
to take that time to add a slight ear wiggle and smile. I might add a tiny head tilt just because
I think its cute. Remember to add that tilt to both the rotation
layer that’s on his head, and the one on the hair behind his head. I’m going to check my timing once more. I wouldn’t want the bee to feel like its
racing across the screen and I really want to make sure my blink feels calm. I think I’m going to go in and move a few
of these keyframes around a bit, I feel like the bee is flying a little too fast. I feel like the blink isn’t long enough,
so I’m going to shift a few of those points around. Ok, let’s render it. Yeah that’s pretty good. I will be demonstrating how to do lip sync
in my next tutorial, so I can add Caduceus saying “hello bees”. Leave me a comment if you have any questions
or recommendations for what kind of Synfig tutorials I should make next. Thanks again for watching, until next time.
