Moho Animation Software + Clip Studio Paint. Animation Tutorial "Fun with Smears" with Dave Cockburn

in animation smears are a way of representing motion blur by stretching or distorting the artwork or models they're also some of the most fun frames to do in animation so come with me on an accelerated Journey Through the creation of this bird animation using moo and clip Studio paint first up a thumbnail storyboard helps to work out what assets I actually need to create for the project animation is way too time consuming as it is without doing stuff I don't need to in this example I can see I only need to create three drawings in clip Studio paint in moo a single rigged bird can do the standing looking and anticipation a single drawing for the smear and another rigged bird for the flapping once I had my idea it was over to clip Studio paint for the character designs and character drawings as a side note I actually draw this fast no really using brushes blenders and a bit of erasing I drew a single smeared Wing I'll animate this to give the impression of Speedy flapping I could easily have blurred the heck out of this but went for something more in keeping with the painty style with smears pretty much anything goes for the jump smear I used the mesh transformation tool and the blend and erase brushes on different layers I then collapsed everything into a single layer uh for more m around I'm going for the feel of the movement as if multiple frames were squashed into one after making sure that everything is in its correct layer and folder all the drawings are exported as a single PSD file and it's off to Moo I select individual layers when importing the PSD and my file is loaded up and ready to go look at that my eye group that only had one eye visible has loaded into moo as a switch Layer nice looks like my Mash Shadow layer isn't clipping not a problem I select the body group right click and set it to mask inside the bottom layer and it's back the multiply setting is even kept when rendering also nice to have a better control of some of the bit maps in the project I needed to add meshes to them the simplest way is to select a layer and select the create smart warp layer from the drawing menu this generates a mesh that can manipulate the linked bit map on any frame other than frame zero if I want more control over the mesh and I usually do I create the mesh by hand here I created a new vector layer and named it something catchy from the draw drop-down menu I selected triangulate mesh now any vectors I draw on that layer will be connected by a triangulated mesh in case you wondering why I didn't close that shape closing shapes within a mes creates a hole I selected my body layers went to the image Tab and selected the catually name mesh layer that I want to control those layers I very quickly went through the rest of the model and added meshes to the face and legs next up the bird needed a skeleton I converted the front bird layer into a bone layer by right clicking and selecting convert to bone with that layer still selected I draw out my master bone using the add bone tool I call this one handle and set its strength to zero as it's only used to move the other bones around with that selected I add a back neck and headbone I reselect the backbone and add the back side and tailbones I then select the backbone and add wings and legs to it tip when rigging try and keep a little Bend in the legs as that helps with the animation next I attach the layers to the bones that will move them for the body I selected the body mesh layer and the body bones then from the bone menu selected use selected bones for flexi binding I added the face mesh to the headbone the same way the wings and tail layer were added directly to their bones as they weren't controlled by a mesh once that was done I tweaked the bone strengths to get the movement I wanted flexi binding is fine for the parts of the body that don't bend too much but legs have knees and ankles so special attention is needed which in this case means Point binding I was actually finding it hard to see any points on the mesh layer to fix this with the leg mesh selected I opened up the style palette selecting the shape with the shape selection tool I can now change the color and width of the mesh line ah there they are using the bind points tool I bind the points of the mesh to the nearest bones and test the rig with a manipulate bones tool to tidy up the joints using smart actions I select a bone and create a new action I rotate the bone on the timeline and then tweak the mesh points so they don't look quite so painful with the bone still selected I create another action and rotate the bone in the opposite direction and do more surgery I do the same for the rest of this and the other leg and now for a little leg Magic first I draw some bones that will become the ik targets again setting the strength to zero I select each shin bone then in the bone constraints tab select the appropriate bone from the target drop down for good measure I turn on the squash and stretch scaling because well who doesn't like stretchy legs I also turn on the independent angle constraint for the feet because I don't like them being bossed around by the legs W hey the bird looks happy nearly there all that is left is to add some smart bones so I can animate the face and body with levers first I add a bone and set its strength to Zero from the bone menu I select make smart bone dial I name it and then create a new action adjust the settings and press okay with the bone in its down position I adjust the face mesh to bring the Brows down I hop back to the main timeline and using the same techniques create other smart bones for the eyes squash and stretch turn and then I oh that's the standing bird ready to go on to the flying bird after basic rigging I attach the wing smear to its own bone and animate a cycle of the wing in its up and down positions only I'm careful to vary those positions slightly so the wing looks like it keeps moving I duplicate the wing as a reference layer so making changes to One Wing affects both very handy I flip it scale it and move it into position there's only one more thing to do before I can finally start animating I select the main folder and convert it into a switch Layer that way I can easily SW between the birds when I'm animating so first I position the bird in frame using the camera tools I block out the animation by moving through the timeline and keying the bird using the freeze pose command from the bone menu or contrl F I use the transform bone tool to move the bird into its key poses based on my thumbnail board my timings are just guesses at this point and will be refined as I work through the animation wait what happened there I moved the headbone off the neckbone to get the bird into a position I like this is perfectly okay as it isn't a real bird I pose the bird so it's just starting to jump and then using the switch Layer swap to the smear drawing I position that then switch to the flying bird I position the F bird and animate it offs screen now you may notice that the jump smear is only visible for a single frame and after all that work you barely even see it you feel it though adding a timeline marker is a handy way to see where my switch Layer changes on every model using the same Techni techniques I do another pass through the animation adding some anticipation poses and blinks I animate the flying bird arriving from the smear drawing stretching the tail and foot by moving and scaling their bones I also add a little overlapping action I give the bird flight a little up and down movement to give it some texture after that I make more passes through the animation it's refin and refin till I run out of time which sadly I've just done hopefully you now have an idea of how you might use smears in your own work remember time spent planning your animation at the beginning is paid back tenfold at the end work in passes big movements first then details later you can get pretty crazy with your smears as long as the colors match and the overall shapes follow the motion and of course you don't see them for many frames easing in and easing out smears works very well indeed have fun and over to you

Channel: Graphixly

Views: 11,434

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Id: MJXuPqnUCy8

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023