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Animation resources
Topic Started: Friday Dec 5 2008, 07:25 AM (15,257 Views)
Bit_Master
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SO MANLY IT HURTS
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http://www.kuriositas.com/2010/07/lady-and-reaper.html
At 11/6/09 7:23 PM, Y2k4ever wrote:
: i know how to make home made sprite u draw yourself to awsome

y thak you for noticing u draw many pictuers like cool

bro ~
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Jacks


Very nice. Grim, but funny at the same time, and fluidly done! <3



As for me, I hope the below may help budding artists, animators and beginners of either field, so that we get less questions about how-tos.

---

http://conceptart.org/forums/index.php

A sketchbook thread here is absolutely essential if you're an artist, never mind animator. Update either daily, weekly or fortnightly/two-weekly, but work as continuously as you can.

It's essentially a sketchbook gallery that shows your progress as an artist, and helps other people see where you're at. The reason I recommend this place so highly is because it's absolutely swarming with professionals and beginners alike, you can get invaluable critique on a Quid-pro-Quo basis and you can purchase informative Livestream classes given by one of the admins. There's a sale for On Demand classes happening right about now. In fact, they're even cheaper than when I bought one, so get them quickly!
http://www.conceptartstore.com/stcl.html

Deviantart is all well and good for showing finished pieces or pieces of interest, but a 'gallery' at CA is easy to maintain, so it's best for uploading lots of images in one day (if you do upload daily). If you don't have a scanner or camera (ideally former, but latter if you can get a decent quality snap each time), save up for one, or start off with pictures drawn on the computer, such as still life painting. But if you can, post a good handful of your sketchbook work in there and watch it grow.

---

Now since we've had people asking, I'm going to go ahead and post this one:

http://www.animationforum.net/forum

Here is where you can learn about animation, join in with challenges, and show your animation prowess. Since it's animation, no doubt it will be updated a little less (time-consuming as it is to animate, obviously), but I still suggest that if you're practising animation frequently, this is the place to go to document your progress. This one is quite new to me, but it was recommended to me by one of my Uni mates, and I'm already loving it so I thought I'd share it with you.

---

Lastly (I know this isn't two, but shush):

http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/

For voice actors, singers, dub-artists, the like. Not so much animation or drawing, but if you're animating and like to direct your own work, this is a good place to go to scout for voice actors. And if you like to voice-act, then definitely give it a look. I don't know if they do 'diary of progress' style things with this forum, though, but like Conceptart, this is a place where professionals are born and raised.

These here links are for getting the best out of art, animation and/or VA, so I'm not saying you should go and replace this forum- this is where a lot of these things come together, after all. This is just to help any new members - or veterans - to get the counsel they need to pursue their dreams and hobbies!
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Bit_Master
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SO MANLY IT HURTS
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I've stumbled upon a couple really awesome pages, and thought I'd share 'em. How to's and bits of advice that will add a lot of clarity to drawing.

How to draw heads:
http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/05...head-any-angle/

How to draw hands:
http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/2008/12/18/drawing-hands/

Drawing exercises:
http://todayinart.com/2009/12/22/8-drawing...hould-practice/

Avoid common foibles in art:
http://emptyeasel.com/2010/03/12/9-very-co...-to-avoid-them/

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At 11/6/09 7:23 PM, Y2k4ever wrote:
: i know how to make home made sprite u draw yourself to awsome

y thak you for noticing u draw many pictuers like cool

bro ~
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KaDoYuu
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Spasmodic doodler
Animators
Does anyone know if it actually saves memory in Flash to convert multi-layered drawings to symbols or not?
Stay inspired!
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halo
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Idea strikes. Genius ensues.
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do you mean RAM or swf size?
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KaDoYuu
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Spasmodic doodler
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I mean .swf size.
Stay inspired!
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mealguien
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Broken Wavelength
Animators
I've been thinking of doing an animation style based on tweening. I mean, it's technically not "true animation", but I feel confident in using it because

A. It assures smooth animation.
B. You don't have to constantly redraw the same image constantly. (everytime I try to redraw something, it comes out completely different than the original).
C. Some tweened animation really looks quite nice. (Tarboy, Enjoy Your Heaven, the Boozerman shorts, Nyan Caxx, etc.)

However, I do have a few questions. Won't this mean that I'll have a lot of layers to keep track of? Is there any way to merge/group layers together without losing the tween for both layers? Can you do a radial tween? And how exactly do you tween mouths without it looking like a piece of crap?
"Despite all our differences, I believe that we all can come together and sing in joyful harmony about how Mario Kart Wii had possibly the worst Rainbow Road ever."
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Piggybank
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Animators
Well, if you want to try doing tweened animations, there are a few things that do make it easier but can make it hard when you're starting out. The main plus besides the ones you already mentioned is that the "parts" that make up the character or object can be reused, provided you designed the parts to be robust enough to be reused in future projects. This can be extremely useful if you plan to use something more than once in the future, say for an animated series or animated sprites for a game. You won't have to redraw the parts of the character, and will only need to tween the parts to make a character move, which as a result will cut your production time ten-fold.

The negatives (from what I've found though) are the ones you've already mentioned, namely the layers problem. You're going to have a lot of layers to manage if you do complex tween animations. One tween project I just finished (link) ended up going to about 13 layers. I cut down on the amount of layers by animating everything on the main timeline, then putting what I animated into movie clip symbols that only took up one layer.

Thankfully for you though, if you have the latest version of Flash you're capable of putting layers into folders, which makes managing huge amounts of layers much easier to do. There should be a folder icon right next to the button where you can make a new layer; click that and you'll get a folder along with your layers in the timeline. The folder doesn't do anything with the timeline, it only holds other layers that you can drag into the folder.

As for a radial tween, there should be something where you mess with the easing for a motion tween to choose whether you want something to rotate or not. You should be able to choose there whether you want something to rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise, and how many times you want it to rotate. (Keep in mind though that I don't have Flash CS5, so I'm not sure exactly where it's at. You might have to do some hunting around for this yourself or ask someone else that has CS5.)

In my tweened animation I mentioned above, I didn't end up tweening the mouth; rather I just drew different frames for the mouth and had a whole bunch of set positions for the mouth drawn. From there I did the lip-sync in the timeline accordingly by using the mouth "pieces" I drew. Sorry if that sounds confusing, but when it comes to lip-sync I've found it best to not tween the mouth but rather just draw the mouth in it's different positions, which can be difficult to get with tweening alone.

If you still don't "catch my drift", try watching something made with tweened animation (such as Tarboy, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and yes, My Little Pony) and try to pick out what was tweened and what was done frame-by-frame in a character. Also, pay attention to how the mouths are made. Some are tweened, while some are done frame-by-frame. Try and see if you can pick out the symbols that make up the characters too, if you can. That can give you a better idea of how the characters are constructed, and also move.

Hope this helps!
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mealguien
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Broken Wavelength
Animators
Yes, it does. Best part, though, is that I'm familiar with all 3 works you mentioned. And yes, I'm not gonna throw out frame by frame altogether (especially for the mouths. When I tried that, it came out ugly). Also, I do have CS5.5, and have been wondering what the folder does. So thanks, Piggybank!
"Despite all our differences, I believe that we all can come together and sing in joyful harmony about how Mario Kart Wii had possibly the worst Rainbow Road ever."
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Jacks


If you're a fan of animation, particularly My Little Pony and Flash animation in general, 'gbeaudette' (on Youtube) has a bunch of really cool analysis videos.

This one in particular...

http://youtu.be/cF8uV8XlpUM

...is especially handy because he even produced a symbol structure of Pinkie Pie for everyone to use.
So as long as you have Flash, you can use the puppet rig- for animating talking and head movement mostly, but contains a profile AND 3/4's view to play around with. In the video he just uses the 3/4's view, but if you look at the symbol library, you'll find the profile as well.

If you've never used a symbol rig before, it can be a bit tricky, but a great asset to play with to get an idea of how they work (and, by extension, how to make your own if you wanted to).

The Fluttershy head turn video - this baby here- demonstrates 'skewing' features for desired effect, and panning/blurring for focus on scenes. It shows how you can twiddle with various assets in Flash, and learn to use them efficiently. Basically what Piggybank was referring to up there.
I'd also pay close attention to this one if you want to see how the front-view facial features (not to mention hair features) work, so if you you felt like it (and you had the spare time), you could built a frontal view for this Flash as well (only using Pinkie obviously)! I'd say it could be very educational as well as fun :ph43r:
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GameBuddy
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I freaking love that guy.
Visit My Website for all your voice actin' needs.

♫It's so scary the weird way that you watch♪
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Wonchop
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yiff yiff yiff yiff yiff
Animators
If you're using Flash CS3 or higher, this is an essential extension which makes lipsyncing shittonnes easier
http://cloudkid.com/tools/keyframe-caddy
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halo
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I wish I had known about this sooner.

EDIT: avoid this one if you use 3D in your flash animations
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Wonchop
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yiff yiff yiff yiff yiff
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Does anyone even use the 3D tools in Flash? Frankly I've pretty much avoided anything that uses Actionscript 3, and on the times I've had to use CS4/5 for work purposes, I've often desperately wanted to get back to using CS3.
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Jacks


Hell no. I'm still using CS3 myself :ph43r:

Why so many changes in actionscript 3? I know there was a 'practical' reason for the changes, but I can't remember what.
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