TUTORIAL
• FEBRUARY
6 , 2001
Bezier Animation in Studio Artist
[Page 2 of 3]
Record your paths
Get a feel for the brush. When you're ready to get started, go up to
the Path menu and select Path Layer Record > Mouse Draw. This will
record all of your stroke information onto Bezier paths.
Setting Studio
Artist to record your strokes as paths. This will also record
whatever pressure you apply to a stroke using a pressure-sensitive tablet.
Set your background
If you haven't already, set your background to whatever you want. I'm
just using black, but you can just as easily do this over a picture. Just
pick your option from the pull-down menu above your canvas, or, if you
need to reset the background, press the little arrow button next to the
pull-down menu.
Paint with paths
Now we get to the talent portion of the show. Start painting. Remember
that every single one of your strokes will be recorded as a Bezier path
and that, soon, you will need to go in and edit these paths to create
the animation. So try to take it easy on the squiggles. And try to position
your start points conveniently so that you'll be able to grab them and
move them around when the time comes. Remember, undoing a stroke will
also delete the path, but erasing it will not.
For my little experiment,
I'm going to have my subject move his eyes, change his expression a bit
and open his mouth to reveal teeth. Simple, but this is, after all, just
a four-second animation.
In order to accomplish
this feat, I will first draw the features that will not show in the opening
frame, basically working backward from the farthest point. So I'll draw
the tongue. Then the teeth. Then the eyes. Then I'll select black from
my color squares and cover up the mouth (top and bottom because I want
to reveal the teeth just like a real mouth). Then I'll put some black
around the eyes. This will allow me to create a squint effect later on
as the black moves in on the eye. Finally, I'm going to draw patches of
light areas to represent a harsh light striking my subject from the right.
I'll do this in several separate strokes because I want to be able to
animate highlights separately—crinkling nose, furrowed brow, etc.
When you're happy
with your work, it'll be time to move on to the animation. This is actually
quite simple, though the complexities of your strokes can cause some difficulty
in editing, particularly selecting one path nested within another or dealing
with complex paths with numerous handles.
Time
Animation settings
To get started, open up the Timeline Animation palette in your toolbox
to the left of your canvas. Set your frame rate and the total number of
frames. For this exercise, 10 frames per second is great. Anything more,
and the whole thing will look to chaotic. I'm doing a total of 40 frames
because this gives me just enough time to create some slow movements to
match the spooky tone I'm trying to set.
Place
your keyframes
Now open up your Layer window (Canvas > Layer Window). You'll see a
long line of boxes there corresponding to your frames. Hold down your
Option key and click in the first box. This will let the program know
that your initial drawing will act as the first frame.
Place your keyframes
by holding down the Option key and clicking on the appropriate frame in
your timeline. If you make a mistake, you can delete a particular keyframe
by holding down Command and Option and clicking on it again.
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