2023-2-14 Snapshot at BoochBen’s

Totally complex scene here in Character Animator.

We’ve got Ben attracting customers in front of his kombucha establishment, Sammy just hanging around swaying while humming a song, and Mabel and Brad entering the scene to stand at a table and chat.

One odd thing I find about Character Animator is that the characters don’t always remain in the correct position according to the point in time on the timeline in which they were recorded. So the only way to get a realistic feeling for how a scene is playing out is to restart it from the beginning when reviewing it.

Ultimately, I isolate each character and their vocal with a blank background in order to export individual clips. Then I assemble them all in Final Cut Pro X. This allows me to perfect the timing of the characters and make scenic adjustments like pans and zooms within the full scene. I know most adobe diehards use After Effects for this stage, but I’ve got a lot of experience with FCPX so it only makes sense to use it.