Description: When adding a character into your motion graphic it should follow the style of the video itself. This is an incredibly common and popular technique, but requires quite a few steps to get a character into the motion graphic, mainly from designing the character in the first place, to rigging it and animating it, which may only result in about 10 seconds of animation. In other words they’re quite a time consuming technique. There are quite a few tools out there to speed up the process, but here are a few rules when it comes to character animations:
Animate with intention. – Avoid wiggles, or just random movement on the main subject, only animate with actions relating to what is being said, or the action the character is posed in.
If you do wiggle make it the background – If you have a crowded section and need to show movement and it is not on the subject, then do then wiggle. I know I just said avoid wiggles, but if there isn’t much thought needed, then wiggles can be a time saver.
Only rig the character to the point you need it – There is no point adding a whole face rig, or a massive number of joysticks and sliders if you’re only going to make its arm rotate. Evaluate what you will need the character for, and rig it to the level you need it, otherwise you’re just wasting time. Most of the time you’re only going to need arms and the odd bit on the face.
Eyebrows for the face expressions, Shoulders for the body – If you need to exaggerate start with posing the shoulders of the eye brows to really bring out the pose. This stops the character from becoming boring.
Depending on the action, animate the root first, then the lead or the other way round – Animate the most important part of the character first. Then animate what the character is leading with. If they lead with their arm, like pointing, start there.
Follow the principles of animation - There's quite a lot of motion designers who start off in graphic design. When this happens they tend to neglect the principles of animation, and in some cases they learn it more for motion design, this is fine, but it is worth actually studying the principles of animation. Your work will improve greatly if you just follow these.
Use: Use this so the viewer can relate to the situation or motion graphic that you’re showing. It’s a very easy way to show someone doing something related to whatever is being said or what the topic is about.
For some character design examples refer here:
(This resources covers pretty much every single style)
Genre: Principles, Animation, Subject, Character
Examples: