Hi Jarret,

What are you using to do the animation. Have you tried Rubberhose? It’s ideal for this kind of stuff. If you use the Puppet pin option you can also choose whether the arms go in front or behind the character:

http://www.battleaxe.co/rh2-build-rubberpin

Angie

Sent from my iPhone

On 31 May 2018, at 15:18, Jarret Langmeire <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

Hi everyone,

I've got a really tricky (to me anyhow) situation where I have to animate some figures which are in a style similar to the international symbols figures. On the face of it, it sounds really simply but if you take a look at this short test you'll see what the problem is:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d2iet07vk0muozu/Figure.mp4?dl=0 

The animated figure show's how I've solved it whilst the static figure on the right is the character style I need to achieve and the frame in the lower left is the overall style.

Basically the figure consists of black outlines, not solid black fill. It's all fine until the arms (for example) cross in front of the body. I've come up with a solution but once the whole thing gets rigged for character animation it's going to start turning into a bit of a pain, especially given that there are different characters, different angles etc. 

I've uploaded a copy of the project if you're interested in taking a look to see if you can come up with a more elegant and more streamlined solution: 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sl7cdssn2uu87n7/AAA_Xkib9VQhbc48kHlSU4yja?dl=0

As ever, any advice will be hugely appreciated and you'll be saving a fellow animator from too many hours without sleep (and Westworld).

Thanks very much

Jarret