More Pink

The figure's left arm is rigged to its bone via "Link to Bone";while the skeleton
bones are linked to each other with 'Link to skeleton'.

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I've made a recording of a leg animation that shows the use of the crosshair

to orient the placement of the thigh and lower leg pieces. It runs at 12 frames

per second.

Once the leg pieces are properly drawn, it is really quite economical

to put this sequence together. There are only four placement image to 

furnish and the computer furnishes the rest.

Diplomat

source: Le Figaro

author: Alexandre Devechio

translation: GoolgeTranslate/doxa-louise

François Heisbourg: "China is a predator and Europe is its prey"

 INTERVIEW - In  Le Temps des Predateurs (Odile Jacob), François Heisbourg analyzes in detail the rise in commercial, industrial, financial, but also ideological and political power of China. After the coronavirus crisis, he predicted a regional, even global, expansionist drift on the part of the Middle Kingdom.

You describe China as a "superpower". Although it is responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, can it emerge victorious from the crisis?

China has recently become a superpower. This is seen in its ability to influence events but also in its great clumsiness in managing crises. It is a profession in which it is not yet comfortable compared to the Soviets, the Americans and the British who had mastered it by the time of their empire. This results in an unbearable and disastrous management of what has been called "mask diplomacy". In general, the Chinese find it difficult to don the costume. On whether they emerge victorious from the crisis, I cannot yet say . First, because politics is not a horse race. But also and above all because the impact of the Covid-19 geostrategically is not yet measurable. What we do know is ...

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Pink One

Yesterday's problem was simple enough: I created one
bone for the head of my prototype figure and linked the
figure with the bone. (Although one does need to be
careful about the direction of the bone; it swings from the
green 'move' point).

Today's problem is different. I want to rig the entire figure.
I am tempted to make the body the parent bone and have the
other figures the child ones. In theory everything moves with
the torso. Interestingly, this is not how the pros do it: they leave the
head to move independently!!

From my own perspective, if I want to move sideways I do not
move my torso, but rather my leg which moves the torso, and then
the other leg...

We'll just have to see.

My great achievement for today: putting everything in the same group folder
with a right click in the layers panel. Seems innocent enough, but it allows me
to move the character as a whole.

Below, the example character rig:

All I did was use the rotate tool on the lower left leg. The shoe came with it because
the bone area of influence of the shoe was on the lower leg: the shoe is a child bone
of the lower leg bone...

Minimum

Spain legislates a minimum income for households:

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/05/29/lespagne-instaure-un-revenu-minimum-1

Synfig Today

today is the day when I get clear about how
bones and a skeleton layer work.

Now if I could just get a stickman up...

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One creates a new layer: Other, skeleton and links the head and skeleton
with the Link to Bone command. Essentially the procedure in the earlier
Sylvan Dancing Dude tutorial.

Cheesy

Nothing like doing things the hard way. Now that I've powered through
that flower tutorial, I am finding the simpler introductory tutorials for Synfig
much easier to do.

Below, merging images. I've subtracted a circle shape from the rectangle,
and added a star: the circle area blend method is Alpha Over and that of the
outline is Unto.

For the star operation, the outline is Behind and the area is Composite.

Note the small image on the top right, the Navigator. It shows me the current
state of the canvas. and the slider underneath allows one to zoom in and out,
an operation I was doing the hard way with ctrl and mouse ring.

Say cheese:

Good Fun

This could create a lot of confusion, but it is good fun:
Synfig masking allows one to put a chracter into an image.

The blend method on the mask shape is alpha over. The mask and

the Pikachu character are in the same group:

More Synfig!

Planning to work on bones tutorials ie making
moving limbs so that a character can move...

It's a lot of work, but great fun when things do pan out!!

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The secret to successful roation movement: the use of a crosshair.

The imb parts are cut as below; the lower limb is rounded at the top.

A crosshair s introduced at the joint as an independent element:

The lower limb rotates centered on the crosshair:

Always looks smooth!!

Flower Original

Been going bananas with the petals, not to mention how
I seem to make things worse on the stem with every little
tweak.

Below, the original from the Synfig site, which I will be studying
assiduously. Onward!!

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Found my problem:

Need to re-do the whole thing, but I am through the worst of it...

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The final product:

Moving Stuff

Solved my disk drive memory problem (on a windows 10 computer).

I moved my videos from C to D drive by merely changing the letter in
the location adress. Voilà, an extra 2G on my C drive...

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/moving-your-personal-data-folders-in-windows-vista-the-easy-way/

https://www.howtogeek.com/245706/how-to-change-the-default-hard-drive-for-saving-documents-and-apps-in-windows-10/

Pink Flower

The red flower is okay, but the interpolation is not naive.
One sees every move I made going forward to create the finished
product.

Today I am doing the Synfig  pink flower tutorial from the manual. Here I will
be working backwards from the finished flower, after creating a timeframe
fot the initial bud at time 0.. I am then free to go back to when I want certain
vertices to appear ie, I can block the appearance of certain features till I am ready
to show them!!

It's been an arduous  day, but I did get the bulb to appear when it's supposed
to. Tomorrow, the petals!

Flower Tutorial

Doing the flower tutorial from the Sylvan Center youtube.
I had found this already: one uses opacity to make things
appear in a timely fashion; but it is crucial to go from 0 to 1
in one frame, and not drag it out from the beginning.

And a life-saving insight; if one encapsulates an element, one
can - while pressing down control -  center the orientation widget on it.
That's the problem I was on yesterday...

Grr Day

On day 2, finally got a star to rotate on a path. Promlem is,
it's not on its own center...Gr!!!

Immunity

From a March 20, 2020 interview with French epidemiologist
Dominique Costagliola:

Oops

All that fun programming and making films has taken
its toll on my disk memory; I am down to less than 5G left!!

Found a wonderful utility,TreeSize, that tells me where my disk space has gone.
Not spilling any tea, but a user named louise has some heavy usage.
That and Windows...

Time for spring cleaning!

HAPPY QUEEN'S/PATRIOTES!

Got the set-up; need to develop the animation...

Dancing Dude

Been working my way through the Sylvan tutorial on the
Deformation Skeleton (the simpler form of rigging).
A bit of an effort, but worth it. Below, Dancing Dude now moves
the top part of his body. I am left free to work through the rest...

The final:

Math Time

As one French math student so charmingly put it, there is no
mathematical function that describes the path of the Seine river.

Thus the need for interpolation between points!

From the German-Language Wikipedia; we are working
with eight points:

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One of those days when all goes wrong...

And then I found this lovrey tutorial; I'll be starting there
tomorrow morning!

BAD

I'm bad!!

Preview

Been really enjoying the background image on my Google
Chrome page, below.  Used this to inspire my new project.

Found a similar image to use as background. What would be
neat would be to have lights go on and off in various windows,

stars appear, a meteorite burn though the sky... All this to music, of course.

Hope to have something for Monday, which is a bank holiday in
Canada (Queen's birthday/Les Patriotes).
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Starting to appreciate the difference between a run-through,
a preview, and an actual render. Because I am using computer-
generated frames, I have to tell the computer to render what
I want. This takes time, and memory. A preview is an in-between
solution. The film below shows my place-saver comet as is,
and in preview...

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Here is what a render on the MDayM helicopter sequence produced.

(This for use in another animation editor).

The helicopter sequence was rendered at quality 3. The quality range goes from
from 1 to 9, with 1 the highest (and slowest). Quality 5, below:

Interpolation

Starting to find my way around the Synfig interface.
Below, changing the color of my circle by changing
the parameters panel at different points on the timeline...

The first three goes are linear; the last three Ease In/Out.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/motion/motn17692157/mac