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At 6/29/10 12:15 AM, JordanD wrote: Starring me! Yay!

Now I'm still not TOO sure about this thing, please let me know if i should make more of them :) All feedback is appreciated!

And btw, its NOT like "this is how you do this" tutorial. Its more or less just me filming myself and screencap and i talk about wtf i'm doing. Hope you get something from it :)

Awesome stuff bro, it's always fun to hear how fellow animators approach difficulties when animating :) I suggest you make more, and the small webcam at the top is a great addition!

At 6/27/10 06:34 PM, Sottaceti wrote: Okay, so I tried re-designing it. What do you think?
http://spamtheweb.com/ul/s2752010550_Blo ody_Attack_Test.html

I can see you got what I meant :) After looking at the frames I noticed that the frame between the contact and the fully impaled one is a frame where his hand just breaks through but you can see it in the back, making it feel like it lost alot of volume, I'd try and make the arm more visible in the back. Also the pause when he has impaled him before he pulls his arm back out could be shorter :) Otherwise it looks good, You could however try adn add a frame or two in the start aswell as one or two when he has finished impaling him, where the arm slightly slightly drops back down, it will give it a feel that he shoved his arm through at full power then relaxes.

Good luck and cheers :)
/Mathias J.

At 6/27/10 12:29 PM, Sottaceti wrote: Here I did a random quick thing. It's supposed to be a guy attacking another guy and then licking the blood on his fingers. For some reason, it just doesn't feel right. Does anyone know what I could do better?
http://spamtheweb.com/ul/s2752010881_Han d_through_Chest_Blood_Lick_Test.html

Well if I where to make that animation I would first of all change the spacing, right now it looks somewhat like this: l--l--l--l-l-lll-l--l (rough but you get the drift) so he is coming in at a constant speed slows down as he hits his target and then he gains speed again. This gives a sort of odd feeling to it I think. I'd space it either like this: ll-l--l--l---l--l-lll which would let him accelerate his attack and than when he hits the power is decreased (and preferable transfered to his victim, sending him flying) or I would do it like this ll-l--l---l---l---l---l, now he would accelerate the attack and not slow down as he hits the target, simply blowing the victim away with brute force.

I don't know what kind of attack you want him to performe but it looks like some sort of punch? As of now his arm is at the same angle all the time, wich doesn't give the attack much force. when he's attacking he should have his arm 'loaded' at first and then at the last 1 or two frames throw his arm out, creating the thrust in the punch.

Hope it helps and just tell me if I got what you anted to achive wrong or if you don't understand what I meant :)

cheers
/Mathias J.

At 6/24/10 06:59 PM, DemocracyFTW wrote: Any criticisms or tips are appreciated :). Keep in mind, if i should, i will clean it up some.

If you mean finish the post than hell yeah :D

At 6/20/10 01:15 PM, Starogre wrote:

At 6/20/10 03:29 AM, JordanD wrote: I'd be willing to animate it but I would have to charge you on the workload and length. If you're willing to pay, let me know and we'll discuss it further.

Haha you realize his profile says he's 13 right?

I'd gladly animate for a 1 year old if he had cash :P so no harm in asking if he'll pay.

Well you can sorta convert stuff in flash to HD since it's based on vector makeing it bigger won't realy matter :P but as soon as you have a image you've imported your kinda fucked.

The pencil tool is a quick and easy way to make your animation look more professional since the lines will be cleaner, but it has it's draw backs imo, like as you said it can look somewhat pixely, also if you wanna edit a drawing it can either be awesome or it can be terrible, if you just wanna move a line slightly, it's the best since you can just bend it very easiely but if you have to redraw a whole section you will have a harder time sicne you have to match up the lines more carefully with the old ones. So the pencil tool have bothg ood and bad sides, I'd say it's very personal what you like, myself I only use the line tool when I'm makeing aniamtions that are supposed to be sorta 'stiff', ie, instruction videos etc.

If you wanna get a nice result with the brush tool I suggest you do a rough animation where you get the position and timing of the animation correct and that your very cautious about keeping the volume correct aswell eventough it's just a draft. Once you have done that you should have a good enough animation so that if you zoom in up close you should be able to draw the outlines eventough you can't see the whole drawing, ofc this might not be necessary if your animation is going to be small in the end. So, your upclose you use a brush that has the thickness of the outline you want (O'rly? xD) and if your useing a tablet with pressure sensativity I genrally chose a brush roughly twice as big. I usualy set the smoothness of my brush to 40 and than I start drawing the lines. And when you get a line that you don't like the look of, just ctrl+z and do another one. (Some lines I draw over 30 times to get a perfect line.) I had to do an animation for a game recently and it was the passive one so the character wasn't moveing much which meant that the lines beeing consistant was of high importance. I used the technique I just told you and as you can see it's pretty ok even if it is still somewhat wobbly, also the character is about twice as big as he will be in the game so the small wobblines that he ahs won't be as visible then. so if you want more constistant lines than this I suggest the pencil tool.

Anyway I'm done now xD I'm sorry I can't give you more precise information, but I hope it helps...

/Mathias J.
Ps. thanks for faving my tut ;D

At 6/14/10 01:54 PM, allieman wrote: Well,
I've been workin on fullbody and I'm pretty proud of it. Some people say i should be "cleaned", but idk what they mean about that. CC please.

My first animation with a tabletA basic punchHe pulls out a gunFirst attempt at a punch(fail)A sketchy run

Looking real good, tought I'd give you some CC one each of them and see if I can help you out some :)

First with tablet:
++ Looking really smooth!
-- The chin seem to be poping up in the end, makeing his head smaller, his shoulders also drop down in the end. When he turns his right fore-arm seems to be close to his body try and make some negative space between it and the body and I think it will look awesome :)

A basic punch:
++ Great volume control in this one, this one is smooth aswell.
-- Since his punch is moveing in the same direction through the whole punch, slow at first and fast in the end it looks like his arm is sort of heavy, like if he was udner water. Typically a punch is very explosive so to make the viewers able to see it you use anticipation and follow through. If you look at this animation I've only used 5 images (6 if you count the original pose twice). one of him just standing, two of him pulling back, one where his glove touches the sandbag (called a contact frame) and one frame after wich show his hand slightly drawn back and lowered. I have no frame of him actually punching but you still know what he's doing. so try and add some anticipation (hand going back) and some follow through (hand moveing slightly after loseing momentum) and your punch will look more explosive! (damn this one had alot of text:P)

Pulling out a gun:
++ I like the timing in this one and the 'cheat' motion blur is a thing I like alot :)
-- I think this would look realy neat if you let the gun go slightly higher as he pulls it out before letting it drop down to it's end pose, giving it a nice feeling of him pulling it up with force and makeing it look less mechanic.

First attempt at a punch:
++ Looks more explosive then your other punch.
-- (gonna leave this empty sicne you didn't finish it.)

Run:
++ The volume control is awesome.
-- It seems he's floating in space kicking his legs, when you're running you move slightly up and down, back and forth and side to side, try and looking up some tutorials on runcycles, there's a ton on the internet.

Overall it's looking promesing, keep it up, you've got age on your side and in the future I hope to see alot of nice animations from ya ;)

/Mathias j.

At 6/10/10 08:59 AM, iluvAS wrote: =(( the thing is that the "reflection" below it is actually the exact text written in flash. i jus flipped it over and paste a rectangle box with a gradient white 100% to white 0%. this method only works for plain backgrounds. and what i wanna noe is how do i do that effect with a background that is not plain.

Use a mask for the gradient.

EVERYTHING!

Haha but if I where to give you an end to start in I'd say figure drawing, if theres no classes to take in it where you live or you don't have any friend that wanna pose naked for you there's websites that generates random poses with a 3D character (google online figure drawing or something). You might ask how drawing still images will help you animate well, in my opinion (and several professionals I've been talking to or read stuff fromI) figure drawing is an essential part of a good animators arsenal. It gives you great understanding about body mechanics etc.

Now if you wanna start animating right away you can start where everyone starts, first a bouncing ball then a walkcycle then a character jumping then a character lifting something heavy. Thease are the usual exercises that teachers give their students. You can google for animation tutorials that teach you how to do thease animations. From there on out you just animate stuff you find challangeing or fun.

Also the books 'Animators survivalkit' and 'The illussion of life' are two books that are often recommended, I have only read animators survivalkit tought, and I highly recommend it :)

Hope I've given you a starting point!

Your pretty much there but you have 2 things destroying the effect, first is the background, since it's just flat it makes it look like the text is on a wall, makeing the reflection unmotivated. The secound thing is that you have a white background on the reflection text (which is visible because of the background). The effect would work better with a plain white background I think.

At 6/5/10 11:29 AM, Zedakaun wrote: I prefer frame by frame but it takes forever. Is there a faster way with the same quality?

As people have said a mixture of both fbf and tween is the best way to get a good time/quality ratio.

Check out this video it was made by a former disney emloyee and he was one of the first ones to get a perfect mixture between fbf and tweening.

Well, if you make something outstanding you can always send a PM to Tom Fulp and ask for higher limits. We ahve sertainly had a couple of well recived aniamtions that have used 3D before, Two I can name from the top of my head:

O.N.E.

DucktaleZ 3

I think O.N.E. got around the size problem by useing a toonshader and than converting the bitmaps to vector and smoothing it, reducing the size per frame alot.

Vegeta is based on a 3D character in DucktaleZ but if I remeber correctly the creator put the 3D character in the flash than traced over him, giving him a lighter vector version of vegeta. (This flash is hilarious and one of my all time favorites btw :P)

Anyway, good luck with your project!

Try and add a layer above your animation and then place dots on the tip/pivot on the bodyparts, than add a line going through them, this way you can see the arc on your motion! This way you can see if your animation is jagged anywhere, think yuo should try it on the tip of your dagger and youäll be able to make it flow better :)

Hello manpatch, very rad explosion you have got there :D
If I were to give you some cc I think you might wanna do 2 things:
first I think you need alittle more diversity in the diffrent motion of the flames, I'm mostly thinking about the ones at the top, they are great but I think the distance wich they disapear at might be too even (in my opinion :))
Also I think you might wanna add some smoke 'spikes' flying out of the explosion from the debri (Hit me up on MSN if you want an example if you dunno what I mean)
Otherwise very good job, great balance in the colors etc :)

You could have all the characters "visible" on the timeline and on diffrent layers and than you could script it sot hat it hides/showes diffrent layers. I think just having them in a mc and have diffrent characters on diffrent frames would still make them start over...

For the best result adn least work I'd say export tem as video files and put them in a video editing program, should work. (might get some ghosting or frame-droping but that's better than getting the timing of the motion wrong imo)

At 4/13/10 06:46 AM, Toxicsnafu wrote: Hi guys,

I have this idea of making a transition from live-action to cartoon, the live-action segment slowly becoming a cartoon in a smooth transition

Is there any way to fade layers frame by frame in Flash?

There might be some tool for it? But I would just do the aniamtion in a movieclip and than tween the alpha property

Seems like it has great potential! good job :D

Think the wings should keep flapping for one or two more times, makes it feel a bit smoother so that it ain't a bird on one frame and on the next is a dead object.

At 2/11/10 09:07 PM, EUPHORIA1337 wrote:

At 2/11/10 12:14 PM, Dugh wrote: I'm willing to pay max. $200 in total.

Please link me to some samples of yours when PM'ing, by the way.

thanks

REALLY?! $200 DOLLARS? thats kinda silly
ill send one to you for free if you like it nd use it then i would consider payment ogf no more than 10 dollars

You know some of us are actually trying to make a living of thease kind of stuff ;D

At 2/11/10 12:01 PM, M-Shack wrote: Such a huuuuge difference, omg lol

I can't wait till i get a desktop with like 6-8 gb ram

just remember to get a 64-bit system :P I've seen way to many people forgetting that and getting like 10gb ram with 32-bit = they can't use more than 3.5gb of their 10 xD,

At 2/10/10 10:12 PM, M-Shack wrote: So now the fla is too big -_- I went to open it and I can barely even navigate through it. Any ideas on how to fix this? I was thinking of splitting it in half and putting it back together after im done. I am trying to remove some of the extra symbols because some people sent their animations with symbols. Anything else anyone can think of besides find a faster computer?

Not realy good at thease things but I know it can get huuuge if you import the sound and music incorrectly but I doubt you messed up on that so I dunno :/ I would split it into smaller sceenes like you said.

Love the music you picked ^^

At 2/4/10 08:45 PM, M-Shack wrote:

At 2/4/10 08:39 PM, Magical-Arts wrote: the menu looks realy sweet :) couldn't find any bugs, only suggestion would be to maybe add some more grafics for the melee option, so that it looks alot more crowded than the sequenial option. otherwise it's real swell ^^

Cool, so you mean more shapes animating around right?

yepp

the menu looks realy sweet :) couldn't find any bugs, only suggestion would be to maybe add some more grafics for the melee option, so that it looks alot more crowded than the sequenial option. otherwise it's real swell ^^

At 2/4/10 06:16 PM, M-Shack wrote: I am making some final changes to the menu and will try to post it here tonight. in the mean time we still need to confirm a good name. I like TheBogley's idea, but should we use 'A Bit of the Old In and Out' or 'Ins and Outs'?

Place your votes now, or you can text the name you chose to 555-NEWGROUNDS-MORPH-COLLAB-NAME, again that's 555-NEWGROUNDS-MORPH-COLLAB-NAME

think we could call it "Some old In and Out" to shorten boogles version?

I'd like a AMA with Jordan Duchnycz (the guy who made the Exile series), think that would be interesting :)

If you read throgh the post I think you might find the answer.

It is not too fast (I've made runcykles that work out on 6 frames)
What you need to do is to add easing right before he puts the front leg into the ground, so that it's fast when the leg goes back adn he pulls it back into the next step fast and then he holds it in the most extreme pose for 1 exra frame, should do the trick :)