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my main problem with tablet drawing was the lack of friction like you get on paper, wacom's surfaces are too smooth. So a quick solution I came up with was to tape a piece of paper to my tablet. There is definitely a noticeable improvement in line quality. The only down side is that you have to change the paper every other week because it get's warn down over time.

combination of both.

I hope I'm posting this in the right area.

A friend of mine just launched a kickstarter to try and raise money to pay for the animation production of his show he's developing:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beansandfrank/beans-n-fr ank-show-pilot

It's sort of a hip hop version of school house rock. You can also go to their website and check out some of their music:

http://beans-n-frank.com/

At 8 hours ago, Croire wrote:

At 5 hours ago, Celshaded wrote: damn, I wish I lived in Cali

Apply for the job, I mean if you get it you'll be paid more than enough money to move there

Maybe it'll be a shot in the dark, but I'll at least apply and see what happens...

damn, I wish I lived in Cali

For animating in flash you should learn every thing you can about using symbols, even if you're doing frame by frame animation.

For your first animation you should start small and simple, like maybe something with stick figures, just so you can get the hang of it.

yes, skullgirls!

I want to start by saying that this is way better than a lot of the shit I hear on the radio right now, but I'm really old school and stuck in a particular era as far as hip hop is concerned.

I had your stuff playing in the background while I was animating, so you passed that test because I never had to get up to skip a track. "I'm Waiting" is your best track. I caught myself nodding my head to it. I liked "Say You Will" also, but you lose points for rhyming 'liar' with 'liar'. I catch them doing that on the radio a lot and it really annoys me.

the only major thing that I didn't like is that I've been hearing those same tracks used on every mixtape since the beginning of time, ESPECIALLY dead presidents.

But yeah, I would pay money for this if you where selling cd's out your trunk in a grocery store parking lot.

At 2 days ago, bonkanailios wrote: I had one project at the end of last year where we were trying to crank out 3 minutes a week per person.

Holy shit, dude!

It's seriously like watching grass grow...

I know you have a lot of finished tracks, but are you willing to score something from scratch customized specifically for an animation that's already finished?

The whole concept of style is an illusion, you shouldn't worry about it too much. Even if you are heavily influenced by a particular style, if it's the way you naturally draw, then it's your style. No two people draw a line the same way.

People with popular styles like egoraptor didn't start out thinking, "I'll draw like this because it will apeal to everyone!". It's just the natural way that he draws.

Even if you are purposely aping somebody else's style, eventually you'll branch out and discover your own way.

-Play anime soundtrack on loop
-draw and ink on paper
-scan in photoshop
-vectorize in flash
-color in flash (my least favorite part)
-make shitty backgrounds in flash
-end

I tend to listen to a variety of anime and video game soundtracks. I have this thing I do sometimes where I'll pick a song and let it play on loop.

do a tutorial explaining how to do a frame by frame bouncing ball animation. timing and spacing, squash and strech and all that good stuff.

At 2 minutes ago, 0peth wrote: Thanks everyone for the responses. I think I will definitely get the Wacom tablet. All I need after that is latest version of Flash, right?

I think going straight into flash when you're just starting out is jumping the gun a little. I think you should start out animating on paper. If you have a scanner or a web cam, there are lot's of free programs out there that will capture your images and make them into a movie for you.

I would even suggest making some flipbooks first.

I did a livestream session this morning that you guys might be interested in checking out. It's the first part of a 2 part thing. It's about an hour long, so if you have some time to kill, I invite you to please check it out (note: I was blasting uncensored hip hop, so if that's not your thing you may want to mute the video and play your own music while you watch)

http://livestre.am/1gUGw

The first part covers mostly sketching and inking with a little bit of color in Paint Tool Sai. I'm going to finish the coloring in the next part in a couple days. If you're interested in watching it live, I'll announce it here before I start streaming.

Here are some progress shots covered during the session:

well, as for the animation itself I was trying to keep the talking scenes economical because the fight scenes are going to be a little more elaborate and higher quality(more frames, smoother animation). But maybe your right, I might benefit from smoothing out the motion on those talking scenes a little better.

I agree that my scribbly place holder backgrounds don't have much depth. Here are some screen grabs with some finished backgrounds in them:

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/8942 641e4a5ae736e4d7e55fed1eba49
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/df22 884c6f64671c035f0e04a3988feb
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/4872 0ecace176e65ab399eaa8335a9b9

but yeah, thanks for the critique. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Here's a snippet from an animated series I'm working on. It's based on an old webcomic I used to do:

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/bf67 6cd4e05c4fcf61a5fde3acea6bd0

I started working on paper with this project originally because I thought my drawings looked better, but having to do all that scanning is for the birds so I switched back to using the wacom.

I feel like drawing with the tablet makes my drawings look wonky or something, but yeah let me know what you think.

Very exspensive.

And although I've always liked that short, I have to question whether or not it's not just a bunch of trace overs from various anime clips.

If you mean an animated gif from flash, you have to export your animation as an image sequence and then import it into Photoshop (or image ready if you're using an older version of PS), or some similar gif making application. Then from there you can save it as a gif.

My influence map pretty much covers everything I think:

3.bp.blogspot.com/_V-4x-SxS37M/THIrDTcVG 7I/AAAAAAAAAII/MJflrqGZNjE/s400/influenc e_map.jpg

How many different computers have you tested your movie on? the computer you're using may not have the ram or processing power to handle what youre doing.

Also, this may be a stupid question, but are you using a preloader?

That looks very cool, can't wait to see the actual episodes, even with that wall eyeball.

the newest version looks pretty nice. Are you going to draw a body around that skeleton now?

black and white is faster.

or you could do a limited color palette with just 3 colors or something.

I promise you guys I'm not trying to sound like a dick(at least not on purpose), this is just an issue I take personally because I have been screwed over a lot in the past from people with good intentions. I don't like seeing artists taken advantage of, and I'm not saying that excepting little to no pay for certain projects means that the person hiring you is taking advantage of you.

I have done free animation for friends and colleagues before and I given people like 85% discounts on things before for whatever reasons. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that.

It's just that a lot of times, people will see your talent and come to you with just ideas and not really understand the work that goes into it, especially if you are doing it from scratch. We classify it as 1 job, "Animation", but it's actually several equally time consuming jobs: character design, storyboarding, backgrounds, animation, ink and paint, audio mixing...that's a lot of work for one person to do. I find that explaining it to people that way helps justify the expense.

Even if you don't feel your work isn't professional enough to charge major money for, that doesn't mean it lacks value. You possess a skill that most other people can't do. If that weren't the case, people would just animate their own cartoons. People that aren't artists have a hard time understanding something until you dangle a pricetag from it.

--ok, that's going to be my last long post. XP

At 1/7/12 11:16 PM, Ilssm wrote:

Are you serious? Alright, I wash my hands of this thread, you guys do what you want. (picks up soap box)

I don't mean charge that all the time, maybe the first few times, or at least until you get some recognition. It's called slowly raising your rates, as soon as you get more at at least decent credentials, you can start charging regular prices. If your a student in college you should also have a real job, and do animating more as a side thing, that is until you get your degree.

You can't expect a random person to pay $100 for a 20 second animation off the bat from a person who has no prior credentials, can you?

(unwashes hands) ok, what you are not getting is that once you decide you are going to start commissioning work for hire, your putting on your big boy pants and doing business with adults. I'm not talking about your friends dad asking to make his wife an animated ecardfor his wedding aniversary, I'm talking about a person representing themselves as some sort of industry professional and trying to get his million dollar project made for Pennies by taking advantage of of some naive young person that doesnt know any better.

And seriously, $100 for 20 seconds of quality animation is more than reasonable

At 1/7/12 10:51 PM, Ilssm wrote:

the trick is being reasonable

considering most of us are students in either high school or college, this is the best we can do right now.

Are you serious? Alright, I wash my hands of this thread, you guys do what you want. (picks up soap box)

next time I get an email from somebody asking me to 22 minutes of animation probono, I'll just send them a link to this thread.

Good stuff. Its like a studio reel.