Adobe Fresco + Character Animator Workflow (Adobe Character Animator Tutorial)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 พ.ค. 2024
- Adobe Fresco is an incredible tablet drawing app, and it's what I've switched to lately for drawing all my Character Animator puppets. In this tutorial I'll walk you through my workflow - how I draw animation-ready characters in Fresco, sync them to Photoshop on the desktop to organize them, and finally do some light rigging in Character Animator to bring them to life.
Download Fresco: www.adobe.com/products/fresco...
Download Character Animator: www.adobe.com/products/charac...
Get blank PSD/AI guide templates: adobe.com/go/chresources
0:00 Intro
0:46 Getting Started in Fresco
4:19 Drawing the Head
13:45 Drawing the Body
18:19 Editing in Photoshop
24:46 Rigging in Character Animator
Get free puppets: adobe.com/go/chexamples (official adobe puppets) / okaysamurai.com/puppets/ (okay samurai puppet pack)
Check out the official forums: adobe.com/go/chfeedback
Share your creations on social media with #CharacterAnimator!
Subscribe on TH-cam: th-cam.com/users/subscription_c...
Twitter: / okaysamurai
Website: okaysamurai.com - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
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Can't even begin to express how helpful all these videos are being for a first timer. Hugely appreciated.
Thanks for such great tutorials. Very direct and to the point.
Thanks for all your tutorials. They got me going to use character animator to design entertaining educational material!
Thanks so Much! I'm really looking forward to my new animation and watching your tutorials. Once again a masterpiece!
Thanks so much Dave, especially for those blank templates
Dave - Thanks so much for this and all of your videos. They have inspired me to break out the iPad and get to work with the amount of free time available.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, can’t wait to start!
I have learned a lot from you and I have started using it in my current projects. Watching through VPN here in China 🇨🇳 . Definitely worth it.
Really helpful and inspiring. Thank you so much for this video 🙏❤️
Absolutely Amazing presentation your knowledge and skills are incredible WOW!!! So easy to bring a drawing to life THANK YOU for sharing your experience with this dynamic software keep up the Great work
My favorite is the sketch guy. Thanks for sharing your beautiful work
This was amazing! I really learned a whole lot from this! Thank you so much Okay Samurai!
That baby yoda art is awesome!
Thank you. Super helpful for a beginner at Character Animator.
Amazing work!
Thanks so much for your videos man, they're so helpful! Stay safe 😊
Thanks a lot man this is cool ! To keep busy on this confinement thanks again !
thank you for your teaching. its very clear , i cant wait to create my own
thanks really helpful
love love love. Thank you.
Great video, I keep meaning to go in and create a character & experiment with CA.
Amazing, thank you for this
FANTASTIC! thank u very much
awesome tutorial brother
Thank you! Super helpful
This was very helpful. I was able to create a character with procreate, export as psd then rig in ch but there were things I couldn’t quite get working properly and now I understand why. For example I created hands as a separate layer than the arms…. And then once in ch the hands wouldn’t move when the arms did after rigging. It’s much easier to create as one piece for beginner. Also the hair, I did create hair in in sections on separate layers but I didn’t realize a dangle had to be added…. I was in the physics tab but couldn’t get my hair to move. I also didn’t realize there was some slight coding necessary to communicate the layers in ch for auto rigging. Thank you…I will try again, this is a great app…I have fresco I’m just more comfortable with procreate but now I think I’ll give fresco a try.
very useful, thank you Samurai very much!!!
Your the best My Samurai!
Awsome, thanks 👍
Great videos I have learned a lot from you men, from Dominican Republic
Great info thanks a bunch
Nice!
aww lil' Link up there jus' chillin'
Thank you.
this was an awesome tutorial, i was searching for how to animate using Fresco, but I assume its not the best place to animate.
Gonna try to link up with Character Animator and hopefully create good stuffs. thanks Samurai!
Love that you are sharing your wisdom with using Fresco app to create characters. One tip - if a ‘shape’ is closed, you can use the bucket tool to drop in color. You can also just as easily recolor it as necessary - you can still you the live brushes as well to add cool techniques to it by either masking the ‘color filled area’ then applying your added shades lets say of orange in his hair. Fresco is an app I’ve been using for well over 8 months now - it’s amazing, I’m just waiting though for it to include the free transforming tool such as warp and distort (which is available in PS). I would love not to have to use Procreate, then export to PS, I’d rather have my docs in the cloud where I can share the art in between apps easily.
Yes! As I've played more and more with it I've found a lot of little tips and techniques. Awesome program.
This way say helpful, l was looking for a quick way to get started
I love all of your videos!!! Do you think Adobe would ever consider an iPad version of Character Animator so we can draw in Fresco and finish in an iPad version.That way it would keep the work flow to one device,and movements drawing etc could be controlled by Apple pencil and camera. Just a dream workflow idea that I hope they make possible😎. Thanks again for all the videos🙌🏾
That would make our lives a lot easier, agreed! Nothing to report today but never say never!
I love you so much thank you so much
I love all the subtle animations on the skin/body of the characters you make. Are you doing those animations in character animator?
Thanks! Yep, anything on the character was done in Character Animator.
Hey man, this looks awesome.
This looks like a cool app for the iPad - but I'm wondering how much work you have to do on the computer? Is it just "rigging the character in Animator" that is done on the computer?
Currently CH on the computer is where you do all of the rigging, recording, and editing. Fresco on the iPad is only used here for making the character art, which can be done using any app that makes PSD or AI files.
Great tutorial as always! Question: have you ever used Procreate on the iPad to utilize this same workflow?
Yes, Procreate should work equally as well!
I have a quick hardware question for you. I am recently getting into Character Animator and have been binge-watching your videos. I am now realizing that my mic quality isn't as great as I would like, so I was wondering what you would recommend for a mic to get the best sound quality so Character Animator can easily pick up the different sound variations. I also don't want to overshoot my purchase and get a mic that isn't necessary for the functionality of Character Animator. In addition to that, I was also wondering if you recommend a webcam upgrade. My built-in webcam feels sufficient, but I thought I would ask you anyway.
Get a good condenser mic. I personally have a couple, the one I have here is a CAD u37 that works great. My brother just got a Snowball and that seems good too. Any well-rated condenser mic should be great for CH use. For webcam, better webcam specs don't mean much for CH - it's more about how well lit and close to the camera you are...so I'd save the money and just get an awesome mic!
This is really cool. I’m pretty set on using procreate for everting though. In that case, would I just move the Procreate PNGs over to Adobe Character Animator? Would I need to vectorize the Procreate images first?
No need to vector, I would just export as a PSD from Procreate! If you skip the Photoshop step here you would just need to do more naming/organizing in Procreate before importing into Character Animator. Fresco and Procreate have a lot of similarities, so this is a good workflow to follow!
You were looking to say that the water color has a good bloom effect.
great job thumbs up from Pakistan
I can't wait for consoles!
Thanks so much for this tutorial. One question, though. I understand that you can edit the puppet in Photoshop and have it automatically sync with Character Animator. But what if I want to edit the puppet in Fresco? is there any way to do that and have it all sync up? The only way I can see doing it now is to edit in Fresco and then painstakingly duplicate and paste the layers I edited into the old photoshop doc. Any ideas?
Not currently - Fresco only saves to the cloud and CH needs a local document to read from. So I try to get all my drawing done in Fresco before bringing it over into Photoshop to do the finishing touches. Hopefully there will be a better solution in the future!
Hi there, thanks for the tutorial. I'm trying to figure out a workflow from Fresco to Animate. I haven't used Character Animator yet. Curious why you go to Photoshop instead of Illustrator to organize your Fresco exports? For me I find the imports to Animate from PS lose their vector and import as bitmaps. I'm a teacher (high schoo) so I'm looking for as simple a route as possible from artwork to animation. My school has Adobe licenses for students, macbooks, and ipads. I just got an apple pencil and am considering getting some for students but want to pair down the workflow first. Appreciate any thoughts on this!
I think the issue is that Fresco doesn't export as an AI/EPS file (at least last time I checked!), which Illustrator would need to work correctly. So as far as I know, PSD is the best export path from Fresco. If you're worried about quality I would just make my Fresco canvas/character bigger (like 3000 x 3000 or something) so you'll have plenty of room to scale down later if need be, but not scale up and get pixelation/blur artifacts. Hope that helps!
Very nice... How do you animate the blinking lights on the robot's bodies? Thanks.
I add a "Cycle Layers" behavior to them to switch between the contents of a group at a certain duration - in this case, it's usually 3 layers of lights that switch every few seconds.
"smurf version of Conan O'Brien" Okay, I lost it there xD
I’ve noticed that if I make a puppet with folders for head and body and everything else that I tend to get conflicts with some of my cloud uploads. Not sure if there might be a fix en route or maybe it’s just a bug flying below the radar. Definitely miss deciding when the PSD was ready to export to the desktop. But thanks for all that you do, Dave!
I have run into occasional sync issues too, I think there are some bugs that still need to be worked out. There have been a few times I have done the manual export via the share icon in the upper right corner, and sent it to desktop via iCloud files, airdrop, etc. Cloud docs is in the early stages - I expect a lot of improvements here in the future.
nice
When following your process once I get to the lint where I am editing the layers in PS I notice that things are now showing up as pixel layers when I view it in fresco so the chin and chair of my character looks very pixelated. Is there a way to avoid this? Also I don’t have the pro version of ch yet. Is there a way I can import mouth shapes online?
My vector brushes in Fresco show up as vector layers in Photoshop when exported as a PSD file. Raster or vector layers should look fine as long as you're not scaling up past 100%. If the problem persists, please upload a screenshot, video, or your File > Export > Puppet file to the official forums at adobe.com/go/chfeedback so we can take a closer look. As for mouths, yes, you could download the ones on pages.adobe.com/character/en/characters and integrate them into your PSD files.
So I made one of my puppets in Photoshop and I want to see if I can add anything interesting to it in Fresco. Do I just need to open the puppet in Fresco and start drawing and then transfer those Freso layers to the photoshop puppet or how do I deal with this?
Yes, import the PSD into Fresco, add stuff, and then export it and update the blue link for the puppet (I talk about this at the beginning of my latest video - th-cam.com/video/uPf-SwSoATw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=JjeaeRlwVLBTlEAb&t=24)
For the body, is it necessary to use the stick tool to keep it fixed and stationary or can we also use the pin tool?
Either should work. Pin will fix one point, while the stick will fix the whole length of the stick. I tend to use the stick more but either works!
@@okaysamurai thank you for clearing that up!
Always vidoes. Inspiring and supporting. I think you said there is a blank Photoshop template for rigging puppets. Unfortunately I cant find it. I am unshure if it´s still there.
Should be at adobe.com/go/chresources - first image!
One question, when i draw a character in fresco, made the layers in photoshop and made triggers and behaviours in Character Animator, can i go back to Fresco to change "for example" the eyes or other things and i have still all the behaviours and stuff ? i know its possible with photoshop and illustrator but fresco ? because it is not possible to open the file directly, because CA is on a Mac and Fresco on a tablet(of course you know that ;) ) THX for everything on this channel :)
Technically this is possible - but I think you'll have to work on a copy of the PSD because cloud docs are not a referenced local file, which CH needs to work. So I'd probably save a copy in Fresco, download a local copy when you're done, and then replace your existing PSD in CH by clicking the blue link that appears on the right when you select a puppet in the Project panel. As usual you would want to keep the structural changes to a minimum - no moving things into new folders or anything - and the rigging should hold. For me though, I wait to do any heavy rigging until I'm 100% happy with how the character is looking, just in case. Hope that helps!
@@okaysamurai thx a lot :) and thx for the fast answer too ! sry i ask the same question in the adobe forum a few minutes ago
Hey Dave, How did you do those robots which offs and on's lights like a real robot. Are there any videos?
I did a video a while back but I forget where it is - but if you download the puppets on okaysamurai.com/puppets you'll see it's just a folder called "lights" with a cycle layers behavior that switches between different layers every few seconds.
@@okaysamurai So, its cycle layers only. I thought there is other complex process. Thank you.
Would the iPad mini be enough if I am just building pretty simple characters?
Fresco on the mini works great for my kids. I'd say give it a shot and see how it goes, and upgrade if you feel like you're running into limitations.
Man this is an immaculate time saver 😀 exciting ❗️does anyone know what the oldest (cheapest) iPad Pro model* would be that would support this?
haha I used Google . iPad Pro (all models)
iPad Air (3rd generation)
iPad (5th and 6th generation)
iPad mini (5th generation)
Nice! Yeah I think I have the latest iPad Pro? Not sure. Fresco actually runs well on my kids' normal iPads too, worth checking out if you have one lying around to test.
@@okaysamurai Okay , using an Apple Pencil or any type of digital pen?
If the pencil works with a particular model, it's been great for me - my kids just use regular styluses, but they're obviously not doing anything professional. :)
thnks
Hi, this is a great video, thank you so much for making it and sharing your knowledge. I also realized this vid is 4 years old. Have things changed a lot since you posted it, or is it all pretty much the same? I'm working on a comic strip series with my daughter, and it seems #CharacterAnimator would be the way to go if we wanted to turn those into cartoons. Any more advice you'd like to share regarding this project of ours? All help and pointers would be greatly appreciated.
I think it's still incredibly relevant, and I still use Fresco for characters all the time! The only real differences is both apps have gotten some extra features since then, so you just have more options if you want them. But the workflow should be pretty much the same!
Question: I tried using both the stick tool and the pin tools and my character still moves around a bit. I don't have the legs and torso in the same folder. I currently have Head, Torso, Legs. Do I need them all in one folder?
Yeah, typical setup is like this: +Character group with a Head and Body group inside. All your head contents go inside the head group, and all your body stuff - including legs and torso - go in that group. If you do that and add fixed handles to the body group, you should be good to go.
@@okaysamurai Thank you very much. I'll give that a shot.
So I drew a couple of things on my puppet in Fresco using the vector brush which means if I zoom in it will not become pixelated. However when I reopen the file in Photoshop the layers I drew in Fresco do become pixelated when I zoom in which kinda defeats the reason for me to use Fresco in the first place. How do I solve this?
I believe this is how Photoshop previewing works - if you go anything over 100% zoom you're going to see pixelation, even for smart objects created natively in PS. But like if I take one of those "vector layers" and resize it via free transform or image size or whatever, it still retains its fidelity. For CH purposes, I would just make your character as big as your biggest closeup shot and work from there.
@@okaysamurai Okay thank you for the advice👍 I'm glad I watched this video and got out of my comfort zone to experiment with new Adobe apps :)
my laptop is small and cant run photoshop. how can i import my puppet with all layers directly from fresco to adobe animate???
You do have the ability to name groups and layers now in Fresco, it's just more tedious than Photoshop. If you're using a tablet you could use the Photoshop app as well.
Can you draw a character on a Wacom tablet or something else and then animate it?
Yep! The same technique I show in this tutorial could certainly apply to a Wacom or any other digital drawing device. I used to use my Wacom in Photoshop all the time for drawing characters (until my drivers went out of date!).
Hi Okay, I m trying to understand why my character has different spelling tag on its body, as an example if my tag says, @left arm on the character it looks like @bgpst the @ is jus as an example, can you help with this please, thank you.
Hmmm not sure. Left Arm is not actually one of the tagged terms - only a select few are like Head, Left Eye, Mouth, etc. The full list of tags can be seen by clicking on the "A" icon in the Character Animator tags panel. If you can't figure it out please feel free to post a screenshot of what you're seeing to adobe.com/go/chfeedback for more direct help!
@@okaysamurai Thank you I found the mistake..
OT: I try to stream my puppet live to Twitch, and I feel that my lip sync, well is not in sync. How can I improve upon this?
I talk about this in th-cam.com/video/0Va3_e-4bKE/w-d-xo.html - you need to add a manual delay to the audio to help in line up better.
@@okaysamurai Thanks, I'll "read up" on it at once :)
Worked like a charm to increase delay on voice! Thank you!
When it comes to editing the mouth how are you supposed to do it if you don't have tabs just two separate apps??
Ideally you should do it within the same app, like Photoshop as shown here, opening two PSDs. Otherwise I'm not sure that copying and pasting from another app will work.
How do you do that? I opened both apps on my laptop from Creative Cloud and they both opens separately.
That's literally the only step I need to complete before I can proceed 😭
I'm not sure why two apps are open - I'm doing this all in Photoshop. So I open my mouth PSD and my main character PSD and I draw them between the two files. I don't do anything in Character Animator or any other app for this step.
i need to know. is there a link for "Consles" here? i cant find it
Yep, check out the playlist here: th-cam.com/play/PLq4LynfF_r15EI3KYQGtYhmCVMHONsAwe.html
Photoshop will not let me import the blank template. says "no parser or file format can open the file" not sure how to fix that.
cant open either the mouths or the file names for same reason
You can't open the .puppet file in Photoshop, you can only open it inside Character Animator. You'll need to open it there and go to edit > edit original or click the PS icon in the project panel to open up the original artwork in Photoshop.
Can I draw my character in another program because I don’t have Adobe fresco?
Of course! Anything that exports as a PSD would work.
I'm redrawing the Cyanide and Happiness characters because they are animated amazingly on Character Animator.
are we able to use phone for this?
Not currently - Fresco is only a tablet app and Character Animator is a desktop app (and uses a webcam).
can i open and edit this project to illustrator ?
No, Fresco saves as PSD files. However there is a tablet version of Illustrator on the way, so keep an eye out for that.
Okay Samurai thank you for replying. I like your videos and drawings. 👍
Hi man, Why did you give your channel name as Samurai? I am just curious to know.
I was in a band called Okay Samurai in high school and college...the name stuck!
Any Dad tips w/ lack of sync and kids frustrated while’st debugging?
Ha - lack of cloud syncing? I've found sometimes I've needed to open the file again, make a small change, then exit out. And there have been a few times I have done the manual export via the share icon in the upper right corner, and sent it to desktop via iCloud files, airdrop, etc. Good luck with the kids. :)
Hi Dave! How can I make my own walk cycle?
th-cam.com/video/gv_2Upvtm-M/w-d-xo.html is how we do walking in CH. You can customize the parameters to achieve a unique style.
How can we combine between ( adobe charcter ) & ( adobe fuse ) ?
www.lynda.com/3D-Animation-tutorials/Working-CG-character/656778/706463-4.html
Is there anything like that for PC?
Fresco is actually on PC! helpx.adobe.com/fresco/system-requirements.html
Hi Dave, where are the free downloadable backgrounds?
adobe.com/go/chresources
Lost the thread of my comment but thank you so much for replying!!
How can u turn “adobe illustrator draw” into a puppet?
Check out this process video we did on a livestream a while back: th-cam.com/video/-jcoNmhlYwk/w-d-xo.html
Hey, can u help me? I need animate a dog in character animation and I don't know how to do it, can u show me?
Check out the walking tutorial. th-cam.com/video/gv_2Upvtm-M/w-d-xo.html 4 leg walks aren't natively supported yet but there's a hack at the end that explains how you would go about this.
@@okaysamurai I think that I have to animate the dog walk cicle in after effects puppet, export a PNG sequence and Import the sequence in character animation lik a GIF of the dog walking, in after effects i can animate a stopped dog, left and right poses and put a walk cicle and disible de moviment but increase body velocity and put a trigger to go left and right and change the poses when i turn. do u understand?
Yes, that sounds doable.
So, is this like a version of ProCreate?
Yep. And since Procreate works with PSD files too, if you wanted to use that instead of Fresco (or any other tablet drawing app that recognizes PSDs), that's totally possible too!
Okay Samurai Oh, I forgot how to share my “finished product” post with other Character Animator fans. Ah, next time I will do the lyrics in smaller sections to have easier adjustments in synchronization. Stay Inside & Drink: th-cam.com/video/eDrCojs9eHI/w-d-xo.html
bRO IN IPAD2 WHAST APP USE=?
Adobe Fresco.
@@okaysamurai ok bro... gracias , saludos desde CUBA REPUBLIC
GO GIANTS
First! Do we still do that?
Sure why not. You win!
#youRock
We want Fresco for Windows (any windows)!!! come on!
It is out for Windows pen devices...helpx.adobe.com/fresco/system-requirements.html - but hopefully more in the future!
@@okaysamurai no, is not. Is for microsoft surfaces devices... I have an Asus with active pen. And is not compatible!
See the link above for current compatible devices.
Love your content. It's the best I've seen for how to learn this programs and I really appreciate the effort. This is going to be an interesting video because I know nothing of Fresco. That said, fuck Adobe. Hard. If it can take Fresco, Photoshop, Character Animator, After Effects and Premiere Pro to make a complicated video, then that's a fail. Sorry. Adobe NEEDS some competition. Their apps all feel like they are from different companies. There's no synergy. Apple should've kept going with Aperture, and then expanded to give Adobe a reason to not suck so badly.
I'm sorry you feel that way - I disagree. I would rather have multiple apps that are each great at a certain part of an overall workflow than one bloated & confusing mega-app. At least for me, the process works great for the content I create.
Amazing work!
Nice!