This is the eleventh of a series of articles over 12 weeks that will cover my research and learning about the 2D animation program Cartoon Animator 5 created by Reallusion. I will share my learning journey including any problems or issues that occur. My end goal is to help you understand what you can do with Cartoon Animator 5 and perhaps try it out yourself. You can read the first week's article here.
Last week I continued to struggle with the bone-rigging process, but I finally found out what I was doing wrong. Fixed it and have started on the first scene of my motion comic, Jack's Trip
Does character rigging work if you wear glasses?
I've been puzzling over what I did wrong over the last two weeks during the bone-rigging process for my character, Jack. I finally figured it out a few days ago when I looked more closely at the last bone rig I created. I noticed that some of the bones were grey in color while most of them were yellow (the default color for connected bones). When I looked this up in the CTA 5 manual, I discovered that these bones were not connected to the other bones which was why they were grey in color.
It seems that my old eyes did not see that I failed to connect the bones and I never zoomed in to make sure they were all connected. Once again it's my own fault and not that of CTA 5.
Once I connected the bones, everything worked fine. Note that since I'm only using a single image of my character there is distortion in the body. Best to break the character up into parts and then add the bones. But I'm happy with how it worked out. It's not perfect, but my goal is to get the first scene done and I'm willing to accept flaws along the way.
I've Now that I've got the process of rigging down (for my needs), I created two more versions of my character: one in profile and one in 3/4 view with hands in pockets. All I need now is to create a final version of Jack where his back is to the camera. These 4 poses are all I need for the entire production.
Production on Scene 1
I realized that what I was creating was a blend of still images and animation. In other words, a motion comic. That realization gave me creative ideas so I drew a shot list for the first scene where Jack arrives via train. It's the first of a series of motion scenes that will be called "Jack's Trip".
I jettisoned my previous AI-generated backgrounds and went with MidJourney, as I have been wanting to use this program for many months. Super simple to get set up with MidJourney. I decided to get a subscription that allows me to create infinite scenes. I used the prompts, "Train station, train arriving, black and white, people getting off the train, no foreground person, abstract people" and came up with this image. I chose to use this for the first shot of scene 1.
I Next, I saved all three versions of Jack (front, profile, and 3/4) into the custom folder in CTA 5. Then I created a new project called "Scene 1" and started on the first shot. Once I broke the rigging logjam, I've gotten very excited about the production process. I still have a lot to learn, but at least now I can see concrete results. I am creating a simple head animation for Jack. Pretty cool! Once we add some sound and filters in post-production, I will look just how I imaged it to.
Final Week: Completing Scene 1 of Jack's Trip
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