I got a problem with cartoony animation. Being a fan-girl for fandoms such as Kirby and the Toon Zelda series, modeling them is just one more way I express my love. Also with “cartoony” my favorite kind of art, on paper or in Blender, it gets a bit frustrating when I come across this dilemma:
Too often do I come along things I want to model and animate that require 2D graphics that seem next to impossible. Many people give Pocoyo as an example, but I have not yet come across anything along the lines of MY style. Pocoyo is more like animating a black splotch, bending the shape to the desired expression. I feel my dilemma is a bit more complicated, since Nintendo seems to like doing the impossible, such as making pupils of eyeballs move in a flat dimension as you sit and wonder “How on EARTH do they do that?!” At least I do. I’m not exactly a beginner, but there’s no way I’m lying and saying I’m an expert either. I fully accept that Blender may or may not have the capabilities of doing such an animation as this.
I’ve included a video to show you what I mean. Watch the eyeballs move the way they do. I would also like to wonder how you can still see his eyebrows even under the hair…
So, to summarize what I want to know: How do you animate eyes and other features like that, and how can you make it to where you can still see his eyebrows under his hair?
It’s either animated “eye planes” or animated texture. My guess is the 1st option, since the edges are that sharp. Eyes are simply modeled flat (like a curved plane) on the surface of the head and then animated.
“Seeing eyebrows under his hair”, do you mean through his hair? It looks like a bug to me. Or they intentionally made the draw order like that for some reason. So the eyebrows are drawn on top of the hair, no matter what. That’s not modeling issue, it’s configured within the 3D rendering engine they’re using for the game.
Ah, option #1 makes a lot more sense. I suppose then it would probably be a matter of timing the animation of the eyes with everything else. Or that’s at least what I assume. I’ll need to look more into animated planes. I have not experimented much with them.
I know for a fact that it’s not a bug. It’s the original artwork showing through in 3D, and they always had the eyebrows visible somehow. But that explanation also makes sense, to have them drawn on top. If it’s in the coding, there’s not much I can do. Oh, well. The eyebrows weren’t exactly that important anyway.
You can animate the “plane eyes” just as any other (facial) animation, but it’s a bit simpler since you really only have to work on 2-axises.
Yeah, the eyebrows are in correct place on the actual 3d model, but they’re just rendered on top of the hair in realtime. I haven’t seen the original art work, but it kind of makes sense in a cartoony way. I don’t know if Blender has some settings regarding that if you’re planning on rendering something. There’s the X Ray setting on object properties, but that makes the object render on top of everything so it’s not too practical, also unsure if it will effect rendering results or just viewport.
Here is example. What you do is to create 2D shape of mouth over face. Color it. Lay this mouth object up on the face with Shrink Wrap modifier. Now you can animate mouth location, scale, and use shape keys to morph it to shape.
Thanks, but that’s kinda what I pointed out in the first place about Pocoyo animations. They have simple black features, while the style I’m trying to go for is a bit more complicated and moving eyeballs.
