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At 2/8/13 04:35 PM, SafePlagiarism wrote:
I'm currently working in 854x480, which has been a nice middle ground so far. It's not so small that scaling it will make my strokes look like shit, and it's not so big that I need to scroll to see the whole stage at 100%. It's got enough screen real-estate to be enjoyable, without most of the problems.

Okay, I'll try the 854x480 resolution, and see how that works out for me.

Thank you for helping me out! I myself am also trying different techniques and experimenting with Flash to see what can yield the best results. It's pretty frustrating, but hopefully I'll get something good from it.

At 2/8/13 03:43 PM, SafePlagiarism wrote:

At 2/8/13 01:32 PM, JkGamer28 wrote:
How would I go about creating an animatic? Does it just consist of keyframes? And would I do it in Flash, or some other program that specializes in creating storyboards/animatics?

You can think of an animatic like a storyboard for your storyboard. Your storyboard is pretty much just all of your major images, and the animatic is a bit more refined. A storyboard for a walk across a room might have only the first and last frame and an arrow to imply movement, while the animatic might have all of the major poses in the walk. Animatics are also generally timed with the audio if you haven't done so already, which gives an idea of how the final sync might look.

Although I'm sure there are dedicated programs for animatics, I, and I assume most others, just use Flash. Take your storyboard and resave it as a new version. I normally just count up for my projects ("title_1," "title_2," etc.), and then I change the final versions of each stage to a more descriptive name ("title_storyboard," "title_youtube," "title_newgrounds," etc.).

If it isn't in yet, add your audio. Then start spacing out the storyboard to sync with the audio. Once you've got the storyboard timed, work on adding in keyframes and refine the ones you already have.

Overall, it's basically just a storyboard for each individual shot of your animation.

Okay, cool; thanks for the information! It'll be really helpful in future animations! Also, what resolution do you normally have your Flash animation projects set to. I have mine at 640x360, and then I use Swivel to upscale the project into a 1080p resolution. I also use a brush size of 2, and have pressure on, and I usually have the zoom level at 100%.

At 2/8/13 12:17 AM, ittekimasu wrote: Might be good to start right at the basics and create yourself a process when it comes to animating.

Decide what you want to animate.

Write up the scene in a document.

Create storyboards/animatic from document.

Refine the animatic until it plays out how you have imagined it. Then once the animatic is timed and represents your original idea, go about doing the final animations/lip syncing etc.

This is how I imagine it goes, I'm still in the process of learning flash myself, but I think with a bit of organising and having a process you'll do fine.

How would I go about creating an animatic? Does it just consist of keyframes? And would I do it in Flash, or some other program that specializes in creating storyboards/animatics?

Hello all! My name is Jakob Mayberry (aka JkGamer28), and I'm fairly new to Flash animation. I started last year when I was inspired by Egoraptor doing a 'Game Grumps' animation, and I started doing Flash animations with no lip-syncing. Then I started to do lip-syncing over time, and more 'smoother' movements.

The problem I have with my animations is that they're very simple (which always isn't a bad thing), usually having a white background, and barely any color. When I try to add elements such as backgrounds and other objects other than the character I'm animating, things kind of become hectic for me, and then I lose sight of why I'm animating, and I usually give up too early and too often. So, I have to keep it simple, or else I give up on how 'complex' my animations are getting, even though it is not that complex to begin with.

So, that's my issue: trying to animate with backgrounds and other objects included to make it more 'realistic' and not so simple. Also, I feel I'm a terrible artist, and so I usually stick with a simplistic art-style, but I feel it's getting me nowhere as an artist and animator.

If you would like to see some of my shorts, they're on my YouTube channel, and I could post some examples of my animations on the Newgrounds dump, and I'll update this to include those.

If anyone could help me out with Flash animation, or teach me how to animate in their spare time, that would be awesome. I've already watched Oney's, Spazkid's, and some other tutorials on how to animate, so I have a basic understanding of it.

Thank you!

-Jakob Mayberry

Growing up in my family was difficult. Our parents divorced in 2005, because father was abusing alcohol, and mom couldn't stand it anymore (at least, that's my understanding of it). We lived with our mother because, quite frankly, who would want to live with a drunk? But living with our mother wasn't a walk in the park either. Times were tough, and we were barely making it through. We moved constantly, because we didn't have the money to stabilize ourselves and live in a house. We lived with our grandma for one year, but mom and her were always fighting, and mom would stay in her room a lot. So then, we moved out, and found a nice apartment to live in, and we spent the last two years of mom's life there.

When we were in the apartment, there was a local Church nearby, and they were having a summer activity, and we were invited to go. We went there, but I felt the activity was very childish, and I felt like I didn't belong. Nevertheless, I went downstairs, and met the Pastor there, where he offered us to go to the Church every Sunday. I agreed, and, for the next two years, I was a Christian.

I was huge into the religion back then, and I believed too heavily into the whole Christ thing. As a kid who was gullible, this is understandable, as I was still fairly young, and kids believe whatever they want to. The pastor was extremely kind, and he would take us to lunch, and pick us up to take us to Church, as he knew we didn't have the money to afford gas most of the time.

Now I'm a teenager, and I've grown past my Christian ways. The reason why I grew past it was because my mother died in September of 2008, and, from then on, I started questioning my place in the world, and I questioned whether there was really a God or not. I questioned those things because I felt that he took away something that was dear to me, someone that was my birthgiver, and I was not happy about it at all. I'm still struggling and coping with her death, but I'm getting through it.

So, you could say that I'm an atheist, but I do believe there is some being out there that has created this Universe. I don't believe in the 'Big Bang Theory' bullcrap, because I don't buy it. But, I don't like to dive into the subject of religion because it's just too complicated, and I don't want to waste my entire life trying to figure out what all of it means. I want to live my life, and experience it, and use it to the best of my ability, so that way when I'm old, I can look back and say, "Yes, I lived my life to the fullest."