Skip to main content

Skate Monkey (Part 1) - My first Crazy Talk Animator Multi-Dimensional Character

Continuing on with my progress of learning Crazy Talk Animator 2 I've begun work on creating my first Multi-Dimensional character. As you may have guessed it's my Skate Monkey character that I briefly attempted to turn into a CTA1 character quite some time back (See this post for the video).

A CTA2 'Multi-Dimensional' character is simply a character that consists of 10 different view angles that form a 360 degree view. This character is attached to a bone skeleton that exists in three dimensional space. The software then calculates which images from your 10 different view angles are needed to execute whatever motion you add.

In the image below you can see my skate monkey character drawn at angle zero in the Serif DrawPlus template provided by Reallusion. The other nine view angles are the CTA2 dummy character which I will progressively replace with my monkey as I draw more views.

A CTA2 Multi-Dimensional character has 10 view angles.
In the short video below that I put together especially for this post you can see the monkey character has been imported into CTA2 and is animated walking forward. It's still a little rough (and I"m not sure why he's missing a pupil because it's certainly there in the template) but I wanted to show you not just how the character looks but also demonstrate how the bones exist in 3D space to animate the character.



You'll notice from the above video that the software is automatically working out the perspective on the character so that the foot and hand closest to the camera appears larger than the ones further away. If you look at the lower inset video you can see the actual bone structure in action (you may have to watch the video at full screen to see it).

What this 3D bone structure does is makes a CTA2 G2 (i.e. Multi-Dimensional) character seem more like a fully rounded character that has form, body structure and occupies real space. Unlike CTA1 characters, such as my Cool Froyd the cat, whose body appears very flat and, when I do move his limbs, they have a less natural movement to them.

Previously in CTA1 to create a flash based character (as opposed to a bitmap based character) you had to import each component of the character individually e.g. hand, forearm, upper arm, eyes, nose, etc. This new way, via template, whilst it is something of an improvement doesn't do a whole lot to speed up the process. Though I'm fairly certain it's quicker than importing every component individually for a G2 character (which is what you'll have to do if you didn't purchase the Pipeline version of CTA2).

I'm not that comfortable drawing in DrawPlus either because it is entirely vector based. Despite it being the only software I own that fully supports my Wacom tablet, right down to reprogramming the buttons to commonly used tools, it doesn't feel natural to draw with. Plus I'm from the school where drawing a freehand vector line is a definite no, no as it creates far too many points. Which means I have to draw by manipulating shapes and that doesn't feel natural or fun.

Maybe I'm just not used to drawing that way yet. Nothing beats drawing for real with a regular HB pencil on paper.

Back to the software. I've also had trouble with the layer order of body parts. View angle zero (the one I'm working on) sets the layer order for all the other views to base themselves upon. However when I import the character the layer order seems to change. I've yet to work out in CTA2 how to change the layering for the default character pose. I know how to change the layer order of body parts whilst key framing the animation but I don't want to have to do that every single time I animate the character just because the default pose starts the laying out wrong.

Colour Styles in CTA2.
One other thing I'm trying to do is allow this character to utilize automatic colour styles that can be applied with a single click (see the image right for an example of some of the styles available). One thing you can do is remove all the character outlines. However, for those of you familiar with vector drawing, for some reason, my 'open' shapes that have an outline, retain their outline when this style is applied?

Something else you may have noticed is my monkey doesn't have a tail. This is because the template doesn't include the tail segments of CTA2 characters. I'll add that in once I've imported the entire main character.

I think that's all I wanted to highlight thus far. It's taking longer than expected because I'm trying to solve all my problems using the zero degree view first. Once I have that the other views should come together much quicker as many of the parts can be adapted from the zero and subsequent angles as I draw them.

I hope you've found this insight into custom CTA2 character creation useful and, if you are considering buying CTA2 Pipeline for this very reason, you take the phrase "Easily create multi-dimensional characters..." used in the promotion with a very 'relative' grain of salt.

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

Artbreeder - Using AI created Character and Background Content in your Animations

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap

Jarrad Wright, The Big Lez Show - Who Would've thought Animating with MS Paint Could Take You So Far?

A friend of mine recommended I should check out The Big Lez Show after I mentioned to him I make animations for living. He said the show's creator, Australian animator, Jarrad Wright , just makes episodes from his home using MS Paint. Somewhat shamefully I hadn't heard of The Big Lez Show, but the fact that it was being made with MS Paint absolutely hooked me into checking out. If you've never heard or seen the show then you, like I was, are probably thinking how good could it be? MS Paint has kind of a cult following of hardcore animators but no one would use it as their primary animation tool on a series, right? WARNING - before going any further, you need to know The Big Lez Show and its humor contains some pretty strong language. By strong I mean it's peppered very liberally with the 'F' and 'C' words and is very every day Aussie, blue collar speak. Unapologetically, all of that, is part of why it's so good. There's a good chance you've

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Eric W. Schwartz: Cartoonist, Animator and Amiga Die Hard

July 1992 Edition, CU Amiga Featuring Amy the Squirrel. American Cartoonist, Eric W. Schwartz , (whose unofficial Amiga Icon, Amy the Squirrel, is pictured on the July 92 edition of CU Amiga cover on the right) is my only real animation hero. Sure there are the big names like Disney , Chuck Jones , Tex Avery and even Preston Blair whose influences can all be seen in my own cartoons but Eric did what none of the others could. He showed that really great 2D computer animation was within my reach with little more than an Amiga Computer , a copy of Deluxe Paint and Moviesetter . This was at a time when computer based animation was in its infancy (outside of computer game animation) and Flash was something that lights did. There were many great Amiga artists but Eric was really the only one consistently making very funny, traditional style animations. His humor and drawing style is heavily influenced by classic Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons but he managed to build on this,

Eleven Mostly Free Comic Book/Strip Resources For Your Next Motion Comic

Created with Lywi.com Comic Maker. One really exciting use for Cartoon Animator and other animation software is to assist in the production of creating motion comics. If you're not familiar with motion comics just think of them as a kind of video comic book that typically features (but not always) all of the dialogue in each panel read by voice actors along with limited animation to make the still images more dynamic and visually interesting. Below is a demonstration motion comic I made many years ago when I reviewed Smith Micro's Motion Artist software (which has since been discontinued but, if you can find a copy, its entire purpose was to create motion comics and other motion graphics). Follow the link to the review if you want to see how this was made. The great thing about motion comics is that they're much easier to animate than an animated cartoon short. Often much of the animation will be moving a a static image of a character, panning the camera across a scene cre

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996. It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it. But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm ). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs . Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures , and Toon Hair , designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker. The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that w