MLP Pointy ponies style cutout vector puppet building journal + download

[Age3rcm]

good morning everypony!

you will know me as “age3rcm”

i will be posting thoughts and experiences while developing a puppet rig based of a stylistic design used for a flashback in the final two parter episode of season 2 of the animation series My Little Pony - Friendship is magic (2010-2019) made in yours truly: Opentoonz

here are some examples of Fan-made animations made in another software with this style of design and workflow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1vt9Iy32dQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXM-sk3qizE

both under 1:30 minutes long

i will be sharing them as i develop the puppet rig, it will be presented in text form, and possibly with photos to reinforce parts or used to deliver a better understanding

one of the first issues that i am going to present right now, is that i have never done a project on opentoonz before, and that i will be comparing the workflow between adobe animate and toonboom harmony wich i have done many works and projects… and i will end up trying to use opentoonz like i would use them on certain aspects.

this is a screenshot of how my first session ended, all layers have a degree of transparency to show where each puppet piece is.

i have the intention to make this an open-source asset, where you can modify and create your own versions and even make money with it. pretty much opentoonz license?

i am creating the vector shapes with the polyline tool inside geometric tool, my first thought comes where i wished i could have access to the polyline tool directly through the keyboard or even the toolbox instead of it being inside this geometric tool, the same goes for when i need the circle/elipse. comparing to the other programs i used with vector work, it is Counter Productive.

and when i started to change to polyline, it appeared that the polyline option changed for other tools too, like selection tool and control point editor tool.

when i used the control point editor tool, i had to pinpoint click the lines to be able to edit them, wich is a weight when it comes to vector work, it needed a way to select the control points just like the selection tool

i learned about color palletes from toonboom, since it is not available on adobe animate.

however, there was an issue that every level had its own pallete, and when it came to colouring the vector pieces i had to pick the color from a color model for each level. perhaps i was doing something wrong? is there a way to set a global pallete to be used in all levels?

this part now reflects about organization. when i created a new level, the window came with the option to name the level, but it turned out that is not the name of the level, instead its the name of the drawing. every level i created was named “col + x” it would be neat if i could name it before creation

when it came to the part of vector editing, i really missed an option to shear the vector itself from the select tool. there is an option to shear in the animation tool, but if you had a vector building workflow experience from other softwares, it will be cumbersome. there was also the perspective tool, though i do not use it too much its still someting i feel its missing

i clicked many times on the bender tool thinking it was a tool to cut the vector. many times i explained people what a vector is, and used the wires as a comparation, and since what the tool on the image look like a cutter, it was misleading for a bender tool. i suggest to make someting with a bent wire and a hammer, since that is how you do on your DIY projects where the wire is heavy

a neat feature of freehand selection tool on toonboom is that when you use it, the selection will be everything the path line touches, while on opentoonz it only selects the lassoed parts where you circulate the entire piece

there is a feature on toonboom that you can either: clone a layer or duplicate it.

the difference is that a cloned layer reflects its contents in all the parent layers, like an adobe animate symbol. whereas a duplicated layer will always be of independant edition

this one got me stressed: i was trying to re-order the levels on a horizontal timeline and i ended up clicking and dragging to select them, instead of clicking and dragging to put this on top and this other on bottom. did i do something wrong?

i did some exploration with the toonboom network view equivalent of opentoonz: schematic and FX, and when i clicked to reorder the levels on the FX view, it sent the xsheet and output levels so distant that it went out of bounds to the west, but they where still connected.

i did some things after this and came back and clicked the re-order button again.

things got fixed and i could re-activate the output.

while i was exploring these functions, i noticed that i could not simply make one level appear 2 times in the camera since there is no “composite” bar or something registering every level’s order of appearing for me to create another link. maybe this is a limitation of opentoonz

a feature where i can make the white of the eye appear on stage and also work as a mask for the iris/pupil

i have noticed that when the program saved automatically it took a lot of time, compared to toonboom, and i thought: since i have a CPU released last year, and even a SSD… was the program saving everything again? toonboom saves only the new files and is lightining quick to save

a huge bummer was the pump tool used to make line tapers. for very short tapers like the ones present in MLP-FIM design i think i will not be able to make them like i do on adobe animate and toonboom even on the lowest pump size… i wish there was a possibility to resolve this, i do not want to convert outlines to vector shapes because they are a pain to edit them again, but that is not just it: the pump tool created a thousand control points wich makes the vector line as practical as a vector shape outline

speaking of vector shapes, the brush tool for vector levels is like a pencil tool disguised.

the brush tool in adobe animate, adobe illustrator, toonboom harmony creates a shape instead of a line, wich should be the function of a pencil tool

there are good things that i where amazed that i could do with the program, like using a dummy column to be able to translate all of the parts of the head like a symbol of adobe animate and a peg of toonboom, wich is like a whole world of possibilities for a puppet rig’s animation workflow

there is also the bend tool, wich its a dream i dreamed when using adobe animate. there is a similar function in toonboom, and to mention that there are extra vector tools that i believe would improve my workflow like the magnet, iron, and pinch tool. as well as other tools and functions i have yet to discover.

but one of the deal changer compared to adobe animate is that opentoonz will run faster and will process objects insanely faster compared to adobe animate to the likes of toonboom

when i made this transition from these 2 software, my works increased in quality level quite a lot

i will still insist and use this program, because the issues presented here will be solved

either with program code correction, or a friendly user wich would show me da wey to do things correctly in opentoonz style.

what i learn here, i hope that one day i would share to someone else who is still learning.

more journals/updates will be coming as i develop this asset.

download puppet rig: https://www.deviantart.com/age3rcm/art/Pointy-Ponies-opentoonz-Puppet-0-1-757644369

[Age3rcm]

as suggested by @rodney

[Rodney]

Age3rcm,

It's great to see you taking the dive fully into OpenToonz!  

You hit a lot of different areas so you might want to break them down into separeate topics so they can be more easily identified and followed.

We can branch these topics by retitling so... I may start a topic drift/refinement here related to a few things you mention.

Levels appearing multiple times in camera

while i was exploring these functions, i noticed that i could not simply make one level appear 2 times in the camera since there is no “composite” bar or something registering every level’s order of appearing for me to create another link. maybe this is a limitation of opentoonz
a feature where i can make the white of the eye appear on stage and also work as a mask for the iris/pupi

This can be accomplished via exposing the level to a different column.

I often do this little trick where I extend an exposure by one frame (or however many copies of the same thing I need) and then strip off that cell and place it in another column.

This not only allows for exact duplicates to appear in camera but it allows for the FX masks and such being applied to that object because it's in that other column.

Maybe I'll stop with that one and try to do a follow up with a few graphics. 

There are several other things you mention that have useful approaches to tackling and those can be addressed in time.  Again, I'd break the subject matter up into smaller topics where each can be explored in depth.

Keep on animating!

[Age3rcm]

thank you for your feedback.

i will create separate topics for the issues i encountered... ?

i want to help encourage people to ditch adobe animate and piracy to get opentoonz in MLP-FIM bronies community