Animation Tips and Tricks Thread!

[RiverJordan]

-I've reserved this thread for ANIMATION tricks only, i assume some form of Coding one could spawn from this thread, but it would be easier to organize if this was for animation only :)-

Hey guys! I was answering some other guy's post just earlier with some helpful tips for flash, and another person replied saying that I helped him too. This got me to thinking, there are probably hundreds of small little tricks that everybody has for animating that would PROBABLY really benefit everyone!

So below i've written down a few of my favorite little tricks in flash that i use often, but thats not where it should end! I encourage EVERYONE to post their own favorite tricks and tips for animation that they know! Even if you think its common knowledge, try and post it :) Lots of people here are learning!

Trick 1- Control/Command key.
Often times when you're drawing you'll find that you have to move a drawing just a bit, so you gotta go and select the arrow tool, then move your picture, and back to brush or w/e. Rather than going all the way to select the tool, click, and return, all you need to do is press the Command (mac version, PC is Control), key! voila, auto-selection tool. It also only lasts until you release the key too, its quite handy!

Trick 2- Line tool
Back when i was 14, I was doing alot of tweened stuff. I personally like having my tween's crisp and not blobby like what the brush tool offers. I really utilized the line tool by drawing a line, press the command/Control Key and then click and drag on the line you just drew (anywhere but the tips of the line). You can curve your line A LOT, giving you much control and a really nice, crisp drawing :)

Trick 3- HSB Colour mixer
I actually only found out about this a few days ago and its totally been a GODSEND to my animations.
As you know, the 216(i think) websafe colour pallete that comes default on flash is absolute crap. Its always good to have your colour mixer where you can see it! (Btw i spell colour with a U cuz i'm canadian, deal with it).
So once you mix your own colours, it often is a good idea to shade your images! Skin colour is especially a colour thats a bitch to find tones of, if you've played with the colour mixer you know what i'm talking about. Turns out if you right click the top bar of the colour mixer and change the RGB mode to HSB, (Hue/saturation/brightness), you have MUCH more control over the colour your mixing, and you can get LOTS of really nice tones, and WAY faster!

Trick 4 - Common Sense on the timeline
This one is common sense to me, however i've seen quite a few people actually either post on the forums, or tell me to my face "if you want to speed up an action, just increase the framerate".

This is wrong.

You do not want to f*** up your entire animation because you want 1 action to go faster. Set your framerate at 24/30/WHATEVER, and then leave it there. How do you speed up your actions? You remove frames.
Less frames = Faster action
More frames = Slower action

TIMING IS EVERYTHING in animation, figure out your timing, THEN animate it.

Trick 5- A nice way to shade things
There are 5 different ways of drawing things with the brush tool. Draw normal, behind, fills, selection, and inside. I found that "Paint by Selection" is quite pleasant for shading things, which also brings me back to trick 1.
Hold command(/ctrl), select your fill that your shading, release command(/ctrl), and then just go to town shading it! you only have to do the outlines of the shadow, as you can always just fill it in later :)

--However, if you're shading an ANIMATION, rather than a STILL, its recommended you use "paint behind" and do the shadow outlines BEFORE you fill your base colours. This is because onion-skin does not show lineart thats covered by a fill on your current layer, that was previous to what your working on in the timeline...--
(I apologize if that didn't make sense...)

Final tip:

Practice, practice, practice.

Never stop drawing, drawing should become second nature, so that you can focus more on the ACTIONS that are taking place, rather than each drawing! As animation is really brought to life by the actions.

K guys, post some tips and tricks! I'll think of more and bump the thread when needed ;)

[Magical-Arts]

Hey man!

Great initiativ and great tips, tought I'd ship in on some secret ninja animation technique (or SNAT)... or just lame a** tips :(

Tip #1: Shortkeys to move around the timeline is "," and "." this is great to make sure your motion is looking ok and is not jumpy, it's easy to find any errors you might have made this way.

Tip #2: More shortkeys, F5 adds a new frame and F6 makes a new keyframe, don't know how anyone can animate without knowing that... I personaly use them 24/7 pretty much.

Tip #3: Plan your S**t, know what you wanna make the character do before you make them do it, for more advanced tips on planing a movement look at NAT #2

SNAT #1: If you are animating a character that will move around alot on the screen (or even small subtle moves) but you still want something on the character to keep it's volume real tight you can animate it on the side of your animation than paste the frames onto their respective character frames. Aniamting it on the side just makes it so much easier to maintain shape and volume ETC, for example if you have a walkcycle it might be realy important that the head doesn't shrink/grow, than you can animate the head turn on the side than paste it onto the walk, to let you better understand you can check my video on youtube out, if you look at 1:34 you will see me use this ninja technique :)

SNAT #1 Example Video: 1:34

SNAT #2: Yeah so plan your stuff. once you know what you wanna make the character do make keyframes of the movement (keyframes are basicly the frames that are the most essential for your motion to work, use your head and think which frames would be absolutley needed to make the "outline" of the motion, most of the time it's where the direction of the movement changes, but not always). Once you have the keyframes you wanna add frames too them to give them approximatley the time they need to give the animation the right timing. Once you've done that you start adding frames inbetween the keyframes, always changing the timeing as you see it needed untill you have a smooth animation. Watch 0:15-0:25 with focus on the timeline, notice how I keep chaning the length of the frames untill I'm happy.

SNAT #2 Example Video: Watch 0:15-0:25 (focus on the timeline)

Yeah.. it's almoust 6am here now so sorry if I faild while typeing xD.... Hope some of this helped.

P.S Shameless advertisment of my tutorials!
Animation Tutorial
Speed Animation Tutorial

[Kart-Man]

Good idea for a thread! I'll post some more specific Flash-related tips later, but for now I'll post some information that two Disney animators introduced.

THE TWELVE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION
The 12 basic principles of animation apply tremendously to Flash animation. Created by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, it details principles that produce the illusion of the laws of physics on a 2d plane, as well as more abstract concepts that will hook the viewer in.

For more information, find a copy of the book they published, Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. It is very well acclaimed.

[Bailifagus]

My only tip is;
Don't get frustrated!
Learning animation (or anything at all), is very, very time consuming, and god do I know, from time to time, really mind wracking.

Work hard, but don't over do it, ladies and gents.
^__^ v

[farfenwaffle]

OOO OOO OOOOO!!!

Tip 1: remember your shift and contro and altl!
-When you have an object selected hold shift and an arrow key and it will move quickly in that direction.
-To select additional objects have a selection tool and hold shift while clicking on additional shapes/symbols/lines
-To quickly move an object with the mouse, hold ctrl.
-Hold shift when resizing to keep scale
-hold alt when an object is selected to quickly copy it. kinda like a stamp.

Tip 2: Inbetweens/tweens
-There's a time and place for everything. Inbetweens are really useful when you are using a complex shape or just want to give it a personal touch. If you need more info on inbetweens, look here(isint the boogley a cool guy?)
-motion tweens for use with single part symbols.
-shape tweens are rare, but use them for basic geometric shapes.

More when I remember them!

[Zyphonee]

Weight (oh boy this will be a pain in the ass)

Weight is probably one of the biggest principles of animation, probably along with timing, but what exactly IS weight, and how do you reproduce it in an animation?

The basis of the wight concept is that most masses are attracted to high volumes of solid, which is colloquially referred to as gravity, duh. I don't know if I'm the only person here who ever saw Celebrity Deathmatch (and I hope not), but there was an episode in which Bam Margera started orbiting around his fatass uncle Vito, because he was so fat he had his own gravity. Funny stuff. Well, in animation, you are trying to make your characters/objects/whatever to look like they'd do in real life, motion wise that is, so even if you're attempting to make a cartoony vibe, you are gonna have to think of how gravity and physics will apply to your character, But how do you actually make your character's movements match those of real life physics? To answer this question, you are going to have to take in count one specific thing; the human base of gravity is located in the hips. Most human motions that require somehow defying gravity are centered on the movement of the hips. I'll give an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60SPslSC bE

Watch that video. You see how the guy performing the technique has no effort in projecting the other guy? That is because Aikido is a martial art that focuses a hundred percent on the use to the hips to canalize the use of the kinetic energy, which is the energy stored by moving bodies of all kind (by bodies, I don't mean human bodies, but objects, etc).
Humans use Kinetic energy to perform action that require the use of "strength", but strength is merely a small percentage of what you'd be sing to, say, move a couch. Move the closest heavy object you can find, table, whatever right now, do it, but try to use only your arms, no other part of your body, then try using your hips to give yourself a boost. That's the closest example I can think of in everyday stuff. I know that it doesn't make much of a difference, but it helps get a better understanding of the use of kinetic energy. If you're up for it, you can read this wikipedia article.

Now that you know how kinetic energy works, you could probably apply it on your own, but just before you go do that, try to remember that the hips normally stays stable, while the most visual motions are made by the back, legs, neck and arms. A little example is this over here. notice how I drew a line for further specification of how the back would be bending.

Here is a slo mo version of the already not inbetweened animation above, just to clear out any doubts.

Hope this helps

[Gustavos]

At 1/5/10 11:00 PM, Duchednier wrote:
Hey guys! I was answering some other guy's post just earlier with some helpful tips for flash,

Funny, I was just over there.

and another person replied saying that I helped him too. This got me to thinking, there are probably hundreds of small little tricks that everybody has for animating that would PROBABLY really benefit everyone!

Many of us have taught ourselves animation, and excel in some aspects like smooth animation, but not so much in other things, like Actionscript. I am one of those who taught themselves, and only got help when asking for it. Their may be dozens of tricks and time savers that I don't know about. It's when I spend four hours drawing one simple character that I wonder if I'm doing things the long way. Or the hard way. Maybe...just maybe.

An exchange of knowledge between animators is a great idea. Like bartering, but it's free info. Free help. By any chance, are tips with working with tablets included? I have one coming my way, and I'd like to start getting used to it, the right way.

Trick 1- Control/Command key.

This must be for Flash CS3 users. I'm using Flash 8 Pro, and Ctrl doesn't do jack by itself. But when combined with other keys, it can do some useful tricks to save time. Example: ctrl+F8 = convert to symbol. :D

However, we're still in luck. How can you switch tools quickly in Flash 8? Put Caps Lock on and mouse over each tool to see which letter is its hotkey. V is the Selection tool. Q is Free Transform. And B is brush. Some are easy to remember, but others are kind of random. So practicing would be reccomended. Make trials for yourself in switching tools as fast as you can.

Trick 3- HSB Colour mixer

Hey, never noticed that before. It is available on Flash 8.

How about you give us the ability to post requests for tips instead of hoping for our specific ones to come? Like this:

REQUESTING TIPS ON GETTING STARTED WITH A TABLET

[Apple-Juice]

Great thread dude, definitely didn't know about tip #1.

Here's an addition to the thread:

I've posted this elsewhere, but w.e

Flash CS4 Has a calculator in it.
Flash CS4 allows developers to make calculations in any place where data is displayed and entered.

As an example, If you had a box with a width of 51.31 px and you wanted it to be a third that size you can now just type in to the width box (in the properties panel) "51.31/3" and it will make the calculation for you.

It'll re size the box to 17.1 px

Beyond division, this can also be done with multiplication (using an asterisk *), addition (+), subtraction (-), exponents (using this symbol ^), and it can even handle algebraic entries which use more than one function or brackets.

If you didn't know about this, then here you go! It's really quite awesome.

fyi, this is a feature which was always usually associated with 3d development tools such as maya or 3d max.

[PBass]

Great thread!

Animators are ACTORS
If you want to tell your stories properly, your characters need to be believable. You should always let your scenes run in your head a couple of times (trying naturally letting the scene unfold in your minds' eye), ACT your scene out (close the door if you're embarrassed), then THUMBNAIL it out (small rough images to plan your action), and then begin the animation. If you can't make your characters act believably, then you can't make your audience care for them.

avoid straight ahead animating
Straight ahead animating is when you draw frame 1, then frame 2, frame 3, frame 4, etc. It gets very weary, and the poor planning can really mess up the timing and the anatomy of the character. Instead, animate using Keyframes, and I'm not talking about keyframes on the flash timeline. A keyframe is a position with a clear silhouette that tells the story of the scene.

An example would be, if the scene were to depict batman jumping from one building to the next, some keyframes might be him running, his initial leap, his foot contacting the ground, him rolling out of the action, him running again.

You'd first plan out the timing and spacing, draw the keyframes, draw the extremes, the passing positions, the breakdowns, and then the inbetweens. Check out the Animator's Survival Kit for more information on this.

A dialogue scene does not consist of just a moving mouth
I'm very guilty of this myself. A common error in much of the animations here on newgrounds is to have somebody stand completely still with only a few parts on their face moving. Before animating the dialogue, act out the scene yourself and you'll notice yourself doing little hand gestures and other subtle movements. Also, your chin pulls your mouth open as your it goes down and your eyebrows pull your eyes open as they're raised.

USE VIDEO REFERENCE
This is not cheating. Just don't rotoscope. Try filming the actions you want to do yourself, or use youtube. Try searching the actions you want with the term 'slow motion'. Also, a great great book to get is Eadweard Muybridge's 'The Human Body in Motion'. It's excellent as it has photographs of people preforming various actions against a gridded background, and I think you can find a copy on Scribd.com. He also has one on animals.

[AngryCog]

i didnt know about the control tip or the colour pallet
i have nothing to add im still quite new to flash my self

[fallensoul289]

Very helpful man. My advice would be though. To either be taught in person by someone or go to school to learn it. Dabbing you're feet in flash is good but it's nice to get a good education on it or have someone teach you that is good at it. I myself, took a 9 week homeschooling course on animating in 10th grade. The basic principals were their but it was not really helpful. It was good for showing you how animation works and the mechanics behind it but it was basically lessons telling you what to do step by step. Animation is frustrating and takes a lot of time. But if you work hard and keep trying you can do it. Another good thing to have is a person you can contact if you are stuck or someone you can send a file to and they can help you with whatever problem you have.

[Toast]

Did you know you can use ++ instead of +=?

[teknoZombi]

this is a really nice idea for a thread. I'll start with putting in all of the important flash hotkeys.
Switching Tools

Arrow

A

Brush

B

Dropper

D

Eraser

E

Ink Bottle

I

Lasso

L

Magnifier

M

Oval

O

Paint Bucket

U

Pencil

P

Rectangle

R

Text

T

File Menu

New

Command + N

Open

Command + O

Open as Library

Command + Shift + O

Close

Command + W

Save

Command + S

Save As

Command + Shift + S

Import

Command + R

Export Movie

Command + Option + Shift + S

Print

Command + P

Quit

Command + Q

Edit Menu

Undo

Command + Z

Redo

Command + Y

Cut

Command + X

Copy

Command + C

Paste

Command + P

Paste in Place

Command + Shift + V

Clear

Command + Delete

Duplicate

Command + D

Select All

Command + A

Deselect All

Command + Shift + A

Copy Frames

Command + Option + C

Paste Frames

Command + Option + V

Edit Symbols

Command + E

View Menu

100 percent

Command + 1

Show Frame

Command + 2

Show All

Command + 3

Outlines

Command + Option + Shift + O

Fast

Command + Option + Shift + F

Antialias

Command + Option + Shift + A

Antialias Text

Command + Option + Shift + T

Timeline

Command + Option + T

Work Area

Command + Shift + W

Rulers

Command + Option + Shift + R

Grid

Command + Option + Shift + G

Snap

Command + Option + G

Show Shape Hints

Command + Option + H

Go to Submenu

First

Home

Previous

Page Up

Next

Page Down

Last

End

Insert Menu

Create Symbol

Command + F8

Convert to Symbol

F8

Frame

F5

Delete Frame

Shift + F5

Key Frame

F6

Blank Key Frame

F7

Clear Key Frame

Shift + F6

Modify Menu

Instance

Command + I

Frame

Command + F

Movie

Command + M

Font

Command + T

Paragraph

Command + Shift + T

Align

Command + K

Group

Command + G

UnGroup

Command + Shift + G

Break Apart

Command + B

Style Menu

Plain

Command + Shift + P

Bold

Command + Shift + B

Italic

Command + Shift + I

Align Left

Command + Shift + L

Align Center

Command + Shift + C

Align Right

Command + Shift + R

Justify

Command + Shift + J

Kerning Submenu

Narrower

Command + Option + Left

Wider

Command + Option + Right

Reset

Command + Option + Up

Transform Menu

Scale and Rotate

Command + Option + S

Remove Transform

Command + Shift + Z

Add Shape Hint

Command + H

Arrange Submenu

Brint to Front

Command + Shift + Up

Move Ahead

Command + Up

Move Behind

Command + Down

Send To Back

Command + Shift + Down

Lock

Command + Option + L

Unlock All

Command + Option + Shift + L

Curves Submenu

Optimise

Command + Option + Shift + C

Control Menu

Play

Enter

Rewind

Command + Option + R

Step Forward

Command + <

Step Backward

Command +>

Test Movie

Command + Enter

Test Scene

Command + Option + Enter

Enable Frame Actions

Command + Option + A

Enable Buttons

Command + Option + B

Mute Sounds

Command + Option + M

Window Menu

New Window

Command + Option + N

Inspector

Command + Option + I

Library

Command + L

this list and other good information came from FlashKit

[Magical-Arts]

At 1/6/10 02:41 PM, teknoZombi wrote: this is a really nice idea for a thread. I'll start with putting in all of the important flash hotkeys.
Switching Tools

Arrow

A

Brush

........................................
........................................
..................

Yeha it's good to know SOME hotkeys but I doubt anyone would read the whole list you posted, maybe pick out the ones you use the most which you feel realy help you and you wanna TIP someone else about, or atleast just post a link tot he full list...

[RiverJordan]

Wow, I really didn't see this expanding into "How to animate" tricks and stuff, i really thought it was more or less just going to be Little interesting tricks you can do with flash. Then we start covering weight and straight ahead animation, and pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE FROM RICHARD WILLIAMS SURVIVAL KIT! (I'm lookin at you PBass and Zyph! . . . jk its fine :P I <3 the book myself haha)

BTW GUSTAVOS! Somethings screwed in your computer software, probably in the flash preferences. I've been using the CTRL/CMD Key trick since MX/04, then to 8, CS3/4. Also considering you have to press CTRL - F8 to convert to symbol, that proves something's up. I've always JUST hit F8 for convert to symbol, never needed to press CTRL too.

TABLET TIPS AND TRICKS!
Okay, so upon request here is MY personal tablet tips and tricks. Now i have an intuos3, and unfortunately i've never played with a bamboo as much as i would've liked to... So you may have to compensate some of what I'm saying for a bamboo (such as the hotkey configs)

Tip 1: Pressure Sensitivity with the brush tool.
As you should all know, tablets nowadays are not just "on" or "off", they have a range from 500 to sometimes 2000 levels of pressure sensitivity! But what use would this be if you're using flash's brush tool as just click-on, and click-off? So its very easy, when you have a tablet installed onto your computer, open up flash and select the brush tool. At the bottom of the tool's menu, there will be 1 or 2 new options. One of them will look like a line that gets thinner and thicker. The other, if you have an intuos or cintiq, will have a picture of a pen that is tilted. I will cover this later.

For now, just select the first option of the linner/thicker line, this is pressure sensetivity, and will allow you to change the size of your brush depending on how hard you push on the tablet!

Tip 2: Pen Tilt (INTUOS/CINTIQ ONLY)
If you have an Intuos Tablet, you'll probably notice that in flash, there's that 2nd option for "tilt" drawing mode. And you've tried it, you'll probably realize that its useless... with DEFAULT brush settings. This is where it gets neat, however i've never actually found a solid use for this feature..
Basically, you must change your circular brush to something that is ...not a circle. In this case, just pick like the long thin rectangle. Its the most obvious to spot what's going on.

Essentially, if you tilt your pen like this: / the brush will rotate like that /
Same thing if you tilt the pen like this \, or whatever, the brush spins :D

Tip 3: What is the best tablet for you?
Money is typically the issue with buying a tablet, if it was a perfect world, we'd all have Cintiq's... but its not...so we don't :(
I recommend reading this post made by Jeff (JohnnyUtah) Bandelin. He describes all of the tablets and what they're good for, Its probably better than me re-writing everything :/ If by chance Jeff missed something, just go to the wacom website and read up on the site, its very straightforward and a very helpful site :)

Tip 4: WASH YOUR HANDS REGULARLY!!! (typically used on tablets 6x8 and bigger, because you cant glide your hand across a tiny tablet easily)
No the reasons for this is NOT because "sweaty hands are icky", but because it will actually increase your ability to draw long lines! When you get sticky hands, and your running your hand across the tablet as you draw, you'll notice that your hand will actually stick to the tablet. It just glides across the tablet easier when they're cleaner, making drawing easier :D

Tip 5: Pen Buttons
Oh sure, the tip draws, the other end erases... but what do the other 2 buttons do? Well lemme tell you, i use these buttons A LOT!

So for some reason, on bamboo these buttons are reversed from Intuos, i don't know why, i've only ever tried a bamboo a few times, but its always reverse than what i'm used to... use whatever you want really.
for MY tablet:
Top button = Double Click
Bottom Button = Right click

Why would double click be so handy your wondering? Why not just click twice? I've actually found its REALLY helpful to enter and exit movieclips rapidly (...was that a sex joke?) by using the double-click button. Just scroll over the desired movieclip, 1 click and you're in, its really helpful if theres like 3 layers of MC's you gotta enter, beats double tapping the pen 6 times :/
--Its also good for exiting MC's by double-tapping anywhere in the scene that's NOT a MC, however if you're deep embedded in the MC, you might as well just click "Scene 1 (or whatever your scene is called) right under the timeline, it will return you back to the main timeline :)

I think its self explanatory why right click is SUCH a good feature to have on the tablet pen (and by personal preference, the bottom button because its more used and closer to where my thumb rests). But I suppose i'll write it out anyways... right click is used ALOT and i don't wanna hold control and tap every time to open right click menu, NOR do i want to switch to a mouse every time... Hotkeys can't do everything! For everything else, there's right click :)

Tip 6: Brush Size, Smoothing, Etc
This one should be relatively short :) Here is my personal preference for brush size smoothing etc, which is actually based off of Rtil's setup, as i was talking to him when i was trying to find something comfortable to work with, and he provided an excellent setup :)
3rd size of brush
Pen pressure on
Smoothing = 40%
- - while i'm covering smoothing, i might as well make it a point to write that Adam Phillips uses 20% smoothing and then uses the Optimize feature to smooth it out after he's coloured everything, you can do whatever you want, but i know a lot of people will be like "i wanna do it the way ADAM does it!" so there you go ^_^
Optimize is located under Modify-shape-Optimize, usually only go about 1/8th of the way up the slidey bar too ^_^

Tip 7: Customizing your tablet's functions!
Every tablet has a few buttons on it somewhere, Bamboo on top, Intuos/Cintiq on the side. I'm going to teach you how to customizes your Tablet to be the most suitable for you.
-Keep in mind, as i'm using an Intuos3, i will be sharing my personal configuration for that particular tablet with you. I think most people here have Bamboo's rather than intuos, so just alter it so that you can work at ease with your particular tablet. (if you even need to alter it, if you've played with functions before odds are you have a system that works already).

Intuos 3 has 4 buttons and a touch-strip on each side. I'm right handed however i still use both sides:
--There is a picture below, but its a crude picture i did with a trackpad while i'm at school... so I'll write it out here too:
Left side:
Touch-strip up = move forward on timeline
Touch-strip down = move back on timeline
Top left button = Undo
Bottom long button = Command/Ctrl
Middle right button = New keyframe (It even LOOKS like a keyframe with the dot in the middle)
Top right button = Delete

On the right side, i only use the touch strip, (for zoom in/out) and the bottom long button which i use for Enter, or playback on the main timeline.

To configure your tablet on a:
Mac = System Preferences - Wacom Tablet
PC = Start - Programs - Wacom Tablet preffs?...

You can also customize whether you want the tablet to register your pen as a mouse, or have the top right of the tablet = top right of screen, bottom right = bottom right of screen, etc. (This is the default for all tablets, I personally prefer it, but its just preference).

That's all I can think of for now :) Hope It was insightful lol

and yeah, apparently we do take requests :D So if you want help with certain flash effects or how to use things properly, just post :)

--pic for tip 7--

[farfenwaffle]

I wish there was a hotkey for applying a keyframe/blank keyframe to all layers. When you have a 40 layer movie it get's kinda annoying. There is one way I found out though! Not a fantastic solution but definitely a solution!

1) put all layers into a layer folder(right-click a layer, press insert folder)
2)collapse folder
3)click on a free space on the folder layer, press F6 aaaaaannnndddd...WALLA! No more scrolling through every layer on the timeline just to advance 1/24 of a second!

[RiverJordan]

At 1/6/10 10:12 PM, farfenwaffle wrote: I wish there was a hotkey for applying a keyframe/blank keyframe to all layers. When you have a 40 layer movie it get's kinda annoying. There is one way I found out though! Not a fantastic solution but definitely a solution!

1) put all layers into a layer folder(right-click a layer, press insert folder)
2)collapse folder
3)click on a free space on the folder layer, press F6 aaaaaannnndddd...WALLA! No more scrolling through every layer on the timeline just to advance 1/24 of a second!

HAH! Dude there totally is! You guys really need to experiment with flash more i found this trick out right when i started, as i had the same issue!

Go to the very top layer! Select the frame you want to apply the MC to and drag down, HOWEVER! Do not drag down to the VERY BOTTTOM! No sir! Just drag to the bottom of the timeline that you see! So ignore anything that needs to be scrolled over.

If you release after pulling the mouse to the bottom of the timeline, maybe a bit further, it auto-selects every frame vertically in the timeline for you :)

[Ani-x]

At 1/6/10 01:29 AM, Gustavos wrote:

At 1/5/10 11:00 PM, Duchednier wrote:

Trick 3- HSB Colour mixer

Hey, never noticed that before. It is available on Flash 8.

I have flash 8 pro, and i can not seem to find the HSB.
any help?

[Ani-x]

I forgot to add,

Clearing the Screen:
When it comes to deleting a entire screen,(your workspace) Simply select the layer your on (must be unlocked) and just double click the eraser.
Dunno if that has been mentioned, but that comes in really handy for me

[Gustavos]

At 1/7/10 08:24 AM, Ani-x wrote:
I have flash 8 pro, and i can not seem to find the HSB.
any help?

I can't post a screenshot of it. Go to the Colors Tab on the right. There's an icon to the right of "Color" (directly under the button that closes Flash!), that, when clicked on, gives multiple options including the ability to change RGB to HSB.

[RiverJordan]

At 1/7/10 10:48 PM, Gustavos wrote:

At 1/7/10 08:24 AM, Ani-x wrote:
I have flash 8 pro, and i can not seem to find the HSB.
any help?

I can't post a screenshot of it. Go to the Colors Tab on the right. There's an icon to the right of "Color" (directly under the button that closes Flash!), that, when clicked on, gives multiple options including the ability to change RGB to HSB.

O like this?

I know its flash CS4, but you should have something just as simelar in 8

[Gustavos]

At 1/7/10 08:28 AM, Ani-x wrote: I forgot to add,

Clearing the Screen:
When it comes to deleting a entire screen,(your workspace) Simply select the layer your on (must be unlocked) and just double click the eraser.

Never heard of that. With a keyframe selected, you can press the Backspace key to delete everything in that keyframe. If I want a whole layer cleared out, I could just delete it and insert another.

At 1/7/10 11:49 PM, Duchednier wrote:

At 1/7/10 10:48 PM, Gustavos wrote:
I can't post a screenshot of it. Go to the Colors Tab on the right. There's an icon to the right of "Color" (directly under the button that closes Flash!), that, when clicked on, gives multiple options including the ability to change RGB to HSB.

O like this?

Exactly! That one!

[Ani-x]

Thanks, I guess you can not do it in flash 8 then...
here is all I got.

Oh well, Thanks guys

[RiverJordan]

At 1/8/10 12:13 AM, Ani-x wrote: Thanks, I guess you can not do it in flash 8 then...
here is all I got.

Oh well, Thanks guys

Well thats just plain upsetting then :/ Sorry bud

[Gustavos]

At 1/8/10 12:13 AM, Ani-x wrote: Thanks, I guess you can not do it in flash 8 then...
here is all I got.

Oh well, Thanks guys

I have Flash 8 pro, and HSB is here right in front of me.

[OnionsXD]

This is a great thread and here's my tip. I'm not sure it's been said yet or not because I havent read it all.

Say you have a bunch of uncolored keyframes next to eachother. Such as a mouth or a character moving. What a bore to go back on each frame and color every color! Well here's what you can do to sae a little time. F7= insert blank keyframe. You can also set this to a tablet button which is what I do. If you have a frame selected on the timeline then push F7 instead of actually inserting a blankkeyrame it'll just go to the next frame. So what you can use this for is pick a color go through all the frames using F7 while coloring the stuff for that one color. Then when that's all done go back with a different color on different parts. Say if it was a mouth first color all the red then go back and color all the teeth in the animation. This seems compicated but it's really a process of pushing a button then clicking. Hope it saves a little time for someone! It sure does for me!

[RiverJordan]

At 1/8/10 06:49 PM, OnionsXD wrote: This is a great thread and here's my tip. I'm not sure it's been said yet or not because I havent read it all.

Good tip, however i could see this being an inconvenience to many people that are animating on two's, which is every other frame rather than every frame. The alternate method to this is just hit the period ( . ) button, which is basically "advance 1 frame" which also works ^_^ Not to say yours is wrong, not at all ^_^

above i wrote that i have my tablet set up to move ahead and back frames using the slidey thing on intuos3, which is handy for this tip ^_^

Another trick: Spacebar is your best friend.

I never realized this until about a few months ago, but if you hold spacebar your mouse turns into a little hand, and you can drag the screen around and edit different areas of the stage. This is especially handy if your working on something big and you're zoomed in, or even just a really big background or something :D

Toodles for now! Its friday night imma go hit the town for a while XD

[Ani-x]

At 1/8/10 06:33 PM, Gustavos wrote:

At 1/8/10 12:13 AM, Ani-x wrote: Thanks, I guess you can not do it in flash 8 then...
here is all I got.

Oh well, Thanks guys

I have Flash 8 pro, and HSB is here right in front of me.

cool, Can you take a SS and show me? I get the feeling im just spinning the retardo wheel here.

[doctormario]

This is a great thread. Thx...Duchednier.

PS the 'colour with a u' part was the best laugh I've had all day. ;)

[bl00db47h]

Be sure to set up your drawings for your animation. Like make sure the arm can reach something, or the character is not too close to something you want him to interact with.

please excuse anymostsles, I am typing on a Droid right now and it is hard to keep up the good grammar :P