Outer Space AstronautsHow-ToCharacter Building 101
Inside Outer Space Astronauts
Character Building 101
I found that I save a lot of rendering time if I abandoned the widespread use of 3D animation. I use it from time to time to get a moving hallway shot, for example, but the characters themselves do not move in the traditional 3D sense. The bodies themselves are made up of many layers, arms, legs, hips, chests, which are then individually animated within After Effects to simulate movement.
The actor's heads are removed from the green screen background and then stabilized; using the motion tracker stickers I place on their shirts. Their heads are then rotated back upright, and placed in a carefully constructed "neck hole" on the character model. I designed the characters to have cartoonishly-large heads, so I have to warp their necks a bit to squeeze into the neck-hole. The head is then attached to the body, so when I animate it to bend from the waist, the head travels with the chest and then forms one cohesive body.
From there I do a great deal of tweaking the animation before I cut the final episode. Sometimes, I have to find an alternate take of the actor that works better. I am fortunate that all of the actors I work with understand the process and they give me lots of choices to play with.
