Firstly, a recap to refresh our memory! In under ten minutes, we were asked to create a swinging rope with cc bend it and possibly think about what the puppet tool would be. I found this to be a very simple task, but I still didn’t make the bend quite as natural as I would have liked. Nevertheless, getting the job done quickly allowed me to guess what the puppet tool would be. My guess was that it is a tool which allows you to manipulate the limbs of a character and animate their motions, because of the word ‘puppet’ which implies control of a character. I was generally correct, just missing some of the details.

 

 

 

 

 

In order to have a character to practise the tool on, we imported an image of a robot called Dave into After Effects, which was an asset made in illustrator. With the image selected, I clicked on the little pin icon at the top of the screen which turned the mouse into a pin as well. I was then able to pin certain areas of the shape/image, just like adding joints. Everywhere I clicked, a small yellow dot appeared, which is evidence that I could then bend the shape at those areas. I added pins to the head, neck, shoulders, wrists, the end of the hands, leg joints, ankled, the end of the feet and the knees. I wasn’t worried as the pins could be deleted later on if I didn’t like the movements created. I could also move any of the points by left-clicking and holding. Before starting the actual animation, I played around with the pins I had made, by moving Dave’s arms and legs and checking for signs of deformity. This was, really, anything that looked natural and unrealistic. I deleted the ends of the hands for example because they were preventing me from moving the arms with the hands, together.

 

 

 

In order to make it more realistic, and for good practice, we took a video of another person in the class doing some sort of motion, as reference. We tried to keep the videos short but also have fun with it and act natural for the sake of the animation. The video that I decided to use was of a classmate dabbing, which I thought would be good for Dave because it is a simple action and with repetition, I can try to make it better each time. It was actually much harder than I thought and I quite quickly learned that the pins allow you to bend the limbs, which isn’t necessarily realistic to how people actually move. I could see that the tool had many possibilities but for making Dave dab, it proved to be really bizarre. I had to keep deleting the keyframes I made, going back, and retrying the motions.

 

 

 

My tactic was to work on the arms first, then the head and finally the legs. I had problems with each and the result was quite funny. The first dab I made Dave do wasn’t too bad, but when I tried to make him dab a second time in the opposite direction, his arm went behind his body, which I was told to ignore as fixing it would probably be too complicated a process. So Dave couldn’t really dab in both directions and because of that, I couldn’t take the animation seriously anymore and decided to make it funny rather than try to be realistic. When I moved the head to match the dabs, it stretched, and I knew that to fix that I probably just had to move around and delete some pins, but I decided to leave it for comedic purpose. I also predicted correctly that the legs would behave in the same way as the arms and I made it kind of look like he was dancing on the spot, but more like he was floating, because at some point, both of his legs were off of the ground. I think the outcome truly was very funny to look at and quite ridiculous, concerning Dave is supposed to be a robot.

 

Here are some tips I learned for the puppet tool:

• In the shape layer, going into mesh 1 and deform allows you to see all of the pins you have placed, where you can rename them and open up all of the existing keyframes.
• You can shift select multiple pins to keep them together.
• It is best used for bendy, soft-looking actions, rather than anything rigid or robotic.

 

To further practise with the puppet tool, I saved a png image of some birds flying. I had to make sure it had no background, otherwise, the background would also be animated and move along with the birds. In after effects, I added a filled in solid as a background and placed the png ontop. To make the birds look like they’re actually flying, I pinned certain elements, depending on their position. I found that three worked best, one at the body to stop it from deforming, and one at each wing which would allow me to move them. From there, it was simply moving the wings up and down (at the same time, which was done by shift selecting) and animating each bird slightly differently so that they look more interesting and not completely in unison. I had to be careful when moving the wings because going too far was a strong possibility and overdoing it would make the wings look too stretched out and way bigger than they should be. I actually played the full animation several times to make sure this wasn’t happening, and if I felt that the wings expanded too much at certain points, I deleted the keyframe and made adjustments.

 

 

 

I really like the fact that I am able to actually animate the characters and animals that will be part of my work in the future. Before, with things like birds, I had to think of creative ways to make them move because I couldn’t actually move their wings, like in my time animation. But with the puppet tool, many more opportunities to show skill and improve my work have opened up and this will certainly make a difference in regards to the quality. I believe that I still have to work on getting used to the pins and how to place them because it can be difficult to make movements appear realistic given the limits of the tool itself. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun making both clips today and I really like the way the birds fly in this one – it’s something I want to include in my work and try more of.

 

 

I did one last animation with the puppet tool. My plan was to animate a seal jumping out of the water onto some ice, and then back down below underwater, where I could demonstrate more skill with the puppet tool with seaweed swaying and fish swimming about. Unfortunately, I only got the first part of the animation completed, and as I am having some problems with After Effects at home, I couldn’t finish it in my spare time either. Animating the seal was really fun and I think I chose the perfect spots to put pins in, as the motion of the seal jumping looked quite realistic. I think the tool works so well with bendy motions like the body of the seal. I definitely have plans to use the tool in future animation, and I think I will practise with it once or twice more to understand it’s full capabilities.