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SketchyPictures
07-11-2006, 01:26 PM
The puppet man animation was a concept I was working on with in Apple's compositing software Shake. I wanted to create a "digital puppet" if you will, and give an illustrative and marionette feel to the animation. I am not a 3D animator but I have always enjoyed animation especially the 2D traditional animation process.


I drew different parts of the character, cut them out and scanned them in. I built, rigged, and animated the characters in Shake. The animation you will see is all done entirely with scripiting; none of the keyframes were done by hand or manually. It has a nice smooth "motion graphics" feel. I want to see how far I can take this concept, so any critics and suggestions are welcomed. Thanks.

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http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/flashbutton.jpg (http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/puppet_man.html)

http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/ipodbutton.jpg (http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/finalIPOD.mp4)

PuppetMan Movie Files

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http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/breakdownbutton.png (http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/puppetman_breakdown.html)

PuppetMan Breakdown Movie

The video files for these clips are in flash, if it becomes a problem I will upload a more standard quicktime version.
lehmi
07-18-2006, 01:14 PM
looks cool.


but they maybe look a little bit like zombies :)

what's the sense of scripting it? If you wan't to make a shortfilm or something else with this technique, would'nt keyframing be a lot more convenient?
SketchyPictures
07-20-2006, 04:49 PM
Thanks for the critic:

I kinda wanted them to look "emotionally dead". This scene is inspired by shot I storyboard for a friend, the man character is up early in the morning and is heading out to an activity he's not quite looking forward to.

The viewer is suppose to view the main character has more of an antagonist, so I had him enter from the right. This creates a more uneasy feeling for us western viewers.

Keyframing manually would be more convenient if the actions were different. Since the animation in this clip consist of walkcycles it much easier to animate using scripts and code to take care of all that. For example, in a 3d software when you're animated a car driving down a road you don't manually create keyframes for each time the wheel spends. That'd take forever, that's why some animators use script driven animation. It handles some of the repetitive behavior. I assure you that for the next shot where the action is a little more varied I will be using keyframes, not scripts.
SketchyPictures
07-20-2006, 04:51 PM
Hey everyone,

Here's an MP4 of the breakdown.

http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/breakdownbutton.png (http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/breakdownIPOD.mp4)

I finished the final touches to the puppet macro, basically it allows the user to animated the character using sliders and values. I'm working on a more advanced version and might post it, if anyone is interested to play with it. I'm curious to see what others would create with it.

http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/screenshot.jpg

Thanks for the feedback so far, this is what helps us grow as artist.
Flog
07-21-2006, 03:51 AM
I really liked the smooth movement. It was really smooth, like it didn't even look animated it just looked like real work physics.


Great job. Love the zombie style. :)
SketchyPictures
07-24-2006, 10:09 PM
Thanks!

I just posted some demo movies of the puppet macro and the scripted driven animation.

http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/macro_button.png (http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/macro.mp4)

mp4 video demo of the puppet man macro in work.

http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/macro_script_button.png (http://www.sketchypictures.com/movies/puppetman/macro_script.mp4)

a mp4 video showing some of code used to create the walk cycle.
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