All posts tagged Element Welder

The warmth of traditional Czech cutout films from the 70s has always fascinated us. They bring cosiness and sincerity, which are almost completely forgotten in the digital age of polished and intense visual stimulation.

Over the years, we have often wondered how closely we could emulate this look in Flash with SMR.

There are basically two approaches which can be taken. There are pros and cons with each one, but both are valid and can produce appealing results, bringing some of that lost warmth and sincerity back to cartoons. Read more
“Is there a way to rig a skirt and avoid Shape Tweens in a synced timeline?”

Smart Magnet Rigs are so flexible that they provide an effective alternative.
A simple setup of four elements allows dynamic and interactive posing, where the skirt is mostly animated at character level, and the body poses are automatically matched. Read more
The question how to rig characters with outlines has popped up multiple times.

In the world of digital cutouts outlines make life more difficult and complicate everything. This is why a large part of the character designs (and rigs) don't have any outlines at all, or only have partial in the facial area, hands, feet and some wrinkles here and there.

Ultimately, it is an artistic and stylistic choice. Read more
Magnet Snapping has been a defining feature of Smart Magnet Rigs since the inception of our system in 2012. The elements were 'smart', because they knew where their place in the hierarchy was and the joints were 'magnetic', because they could reassemble at the press of a button.

Initially there was only one kind of Magnet Snapping, where a child element would snap to its parent. But as the SMR system was maturing, many other types of Magnet Snapping were introduced to cover all possible situations that we could think of. Read more