Book Image

Real-Time Animation with Adobe Character Animator

By : Chad Troftgruben
Book Image

Real-Time Animation with Adobe Character Animator

By: Chad Troftgruben

Overview of this book

Adobe Character Animator is a power app for non-animators that provides easy rigging and easy-to- understand tools that enable you to create entertainment or business videos in no time. This guide to Character Animator gives you a comprehensive overview of the app, helping you learn the entire process—from importing a character designed in Adobe Photoshop to animating a sequence. Complete with background art, multiple character rigs and Character Animator project files, this book will show you how to animate a scene in Character Animator from start to finish. Starting with a character PSD from another artist, you’ll organize and condense the file to prepare it for rigging and animation. From there, you’ll systematically rig the character while exploring advanced behaviors and triggers to animate a complex scene that takes advantage of the app’s best features. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create appealing animations in Character Animator for any purpose.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Preparing Character Art for Rigging
5
Part 2: Rigging Character Art for Animation
11
Part 3: Animating and Refining Your Scene

What is Adobe Animate?

Adobe Animate is one of the most well-known animation apps. You may know of it under a different name, but it cemented its popularity in the 1990s. In this section, we will cover the following:

  • A brief history of Adobe Animate
  • The strengths of Animate
  • Using Animate with our Character Animator productions

With that said, let’s take a quick trip back in time.

Brief history of Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate is one of the longest-running 2D animation apps to exist, at least for the average consumer. While we won’t spend much time on its history, it’s always good to have a bit of context.

Created in 1996 under the name FutureSplash Animator, the app has undergone name changes and ownership changes from FutureWave Software, to Macromedia, and finally, to Adobe. The most popular name for this app was Flash.

Figure 2.1: Trial splash screen for the original FutureSplash Animator

Figure 2.1: Trial splash screen for the original FutureSplash Animator

The app saw...