【Spine2D】 Animation Workflow + Upcoming Class Announcement!

Sharing my Spine2D animation workflow

*********************The following animation is an intro I made for 汐Seki**********************

I'm back with another update! This time, I’m sharing my process from the initial idle loop to adding the final performance. This has been one of my favorite animation commissions lately! (Mainly because the illustrator gave me four extra pose variations, and the client was super nice to work with!)

After agreeing on the general animation concept with the client, we discussed the specific movements with the illustrator. Once we got the necessary variations drawn up, I jumped straight into production.

While rigging a chibi character is generally on the easier side, dealing with four different variations meant that if the initial rig wasn't rock solid, the logic was going to become a massive headache later on.

Because of this, I always start by building an idle loop for the default pose (pose #1).

(Making an idle loop right after rigging is actually the fastest step! Thanks to Spine's key offset feature, you can usually knock out a basic loop in about an hour once the rig is done—whether it's a standard illustration or a chibi. Because of this, I always make one, even if the client didn't explicitly ask for it. It's a great way to test the model's baseline range of motion and make sure everything flows smoothly. By the way, I've also figured out a workflow in Live2D that mimics Spine's offset feature!)

Once the client approves the initial loop, I do a quick, basic rig for the other variations and move on to blocking out the key poses. (When connecting poses #2, #3, and #4, my habit is to rig as I animate pose-to-pose. This stops me from wasting time setting up a bunch of controllers I might not actually need.)

Once I hit the rough blocking stage shown in the bottom left of the video, I show it to the client again. If they love the performance, it's time to polish and finalize the animation!

Since this process can be pretty complex, and I've been bouncing between the two programs a lot lately, I've discovered quite a few handy tricks! (Including that super fast idle loop method for Live2D.)

So, if you want to learn these techniques and are interested in Live2D rigging, you absolutely have to consider signing up for the great Red Soda's Live2D class!

I’m incredibly thankful to Red Soda for giving me the opportunity to guest lecture for two of his classes to share my animation workflow.

I'm thrilled to have this chance, and I'll be preparing hard! I'll be sharing my methods for creating Live2D idle loops, along with my general workflow and tips on where to start when you want to add more expressive performance to your work.

If you're interested in both programs, I highly recommend signing up. Come be my juniors! Red Soda's class is seriously top-tier!