How to Save Characters in Adobe Animate

Saving characters in Adobe Animate primarily involves saving the project file itself, which contains all your assets, including character designs, rigs, and animations. However, if you are looking to save a character for use in another Adobe application like Character Animator, the process differs, and the provided reference describes saving characters in that context.

Saving Characters Within an Adobe Animate Project

When working with characters in Adobe Animate, your characters are typically stored as Symbols (Movie Clips, Graphics, or Buttons) within the document's Library.

Here's how you save your characters as part of your Animate project:

• Saving the Project File: The most common way to save your characters is by saving the main Animate document.

  • Go to File > Save or File > Save As....
  • Save your file as an Adobe Animate Document with the .fla extension.
  • This saves all your character assets, timelines, layers, and settings within that single file.

• Saving Symbols to a Common Library: If you want to reuse a character symbol across multiple Animate projects, you can save it to a common library.

  • Right-click on the character symbol in the Library panel.
  • Select Save As....
  • Save the symbol as a .swc file. You can then import this .swc file into the library of other Animate projects.

• Sharing Symbols via Creative Cloud Libraries: You can also add character symbols or colors directly to your Creative Cloud Libraries for easy access in other Adobe applications that support CC Libraries (like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, etc.), though their functionality may vary depending on the receiving application.

Saving Characters for Use in Adobe Character Animator (.puppet Files)

The provided reference from Brainbuffet describes a specific process for saving characters as .puppet files. It states:

"So now that you've clicked the push parameters to source button just cruise line up to file. And export and pop it. And that's it you'll get a dot puppet file." - Learn Character Animator with Brainbuffet

It's important to note that this method of saving a character as a .puppet file is specific to Adobe Character Animator, not Adobe Animate. Adobe Animate does not natively save files in the .puppet format.

If you want to use characters created in Adobe Animate within Adobe Character Animator, the typical workflow involves:

1. Designing your character assets in Animate (or other design tools like Photoshop or Illustrator).
2. Exporting these layered assets from Animate (e.g., as a layered PSD file) in a format that Character Animator can read.
3. Importing the layered file into Character Animator to create a new puppet.
4. Rigging the puppet in Character Animator.
5. Finally, saving that rigged character within Character Animator as a .puppet file using the method described in the reference (File > Export > Puppet).

In summary, while Adobe Animate is excellent for creating characters and animation, saving them as a .puppet file is a function of Adobe Character Animator, used for performance-based animation.

Key Differences in Saving

Understanding the distinction between saving in Animate versus Character Animator is crucial:

Feature	Adobe Animate (.fla, .swc)	Adobe Character Animator (.puppet)
Primary Use	Timeline animation, interactive content	Performance capture, puppet animation
Character Type	Symbols (Movie Clips, Graphics)	Puppets
Saving Method	Save .fla file, Save Symbol as .swc	File > Export > Puppet to save .puppet
File Format	.fla, .swc	.puppet

By saving your .fla files and managing symbols in the library, you effectively save your characters and their associated animations and rigs within Adobe Animate. For interoperability with Character Animator, you export character assets in compatible formats.