Or to put it more specifically, how is it possible to have a character turn their heads from front to profile without first drawing separate images of the character’s face in profile and from the front? A lot of cartoons these days use rigged modeles so the animators don’t have to redraw the characters over and over again, but there are parts of this that I don’t understand. I get something as simple as a handwave, where you could rotate a 2d image around an elbow axis and I’ve done that before in After Effects. I also understand how you can do all this in 3D. but I cannot understand for the life of me how a computer can calculate different perspectives with cutouts of flat images.
Example of what I’m talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Ky_IOfPkQ
In: 2
Animators draw characters in particular start and end poses, each with the desired perspective. Some movements need intermediate poses (e.g. head looking right > head looking straight-on > head looking left).
The computer simply interpolates between these reference poses, which is straightforward because the characters are drawn as vector graphics.
For a particularly complicated movement, 2 or 3 intermediate poses might be required for smooth interpolation.
So while the animators don’t draw individual frames (because you don’t need to draw anything at all. It’s all vector graphics) these poses are like individual frames through which the interpolation transitions as it proceeds from beginning to end.
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