So after 1 month of straight gaming, I decided I should pick up flash again for the sake of my sanity. All of my previous animations (submitted from blackcat2000. The account I'm on is new, but I'm the same person) were decent, but never turned out quite as elaborately as I liked, as my doodling skills could never really be reflected in my animations.
Then I decided that maybe I should take a picture of my sketches (I don't have a scanner), upload them to flash, then trace the outlines with the line tool. I did a few animated gifs, and they turned out quite good, and I'm currently working on a project.
I'd like some advice on what I should do. Here's a sort of lengthy list of my main concerns:
How should I make sure my frames flow nicely into each other (at the moment I do the tracing first then I try and adjust the frames so they flow better)?
I drew out a storyboard for what will hopefully be my first animation on this account, and to introduce my character, I intend to include a slideshow-esque portion of the animation. Would that be really boring?
Should I use the Newgrounds API? I wasn't really able to track any stats on my animations before (doin' it wrong?) and maybe ads would make my work less appealing.
Lastly, I was going to include a signature of sorts as a logo to be placed in the lower right-hand corner of the animation, but thought it might be a little redundant.
If you read through all that, thanks, any/all help would be appreciated!
At 8/2/11 07:27 PM, webufs wrote: I'd like some advice on what I should do. Here's a sort of lengthy list of my main concerns:
How should I make sure my frames flow nicely into each other (at the moment I do the tracing first then I try and adjust the frames so they flow better)?
I drew out a storyboard for what will hopefully be my first animation on this account, and to introduce my character, I intend to include a slideshow-esque portion of the animation. Would that be really boring?
Should I use the Newgrounds API? I wasn't really able to track any stats on my animations before (doin' it wrong?) and maybe ads would make my work less appealing.
Lastly, I was going to include a signature of sorts as a logo to be placed in the lower right-hand corner of the animation, but thought it might be a little redundant.
If you read through all that, thanks, any/all help would be appreciated!
1.
Idunno if your already doing this but here goes: Draw the first frame (say, just a man standing and looking towards the sun) then draw the last frame, of wich you want him to transition to. (to continue our example, man turning around to looking towards the mountains). Then draw the frames inbetween. The choice is of course yours wich ones.. I prefer to draw from the last to the first, but if anyone has better tips than that I'd be happy for the answer.
2.
Depends how long it would be, and how fluid and interesting it is. Like, just a bunch of pictures slideshowing (like a powerpoint presentation) with a voice talking for 5 minutes would be really boring.. But with good transitions (fade-ins, fade-outs.. tweenins, resolving in.. slowly moved characters in the pictures themselves) would be cool.
3.
This is your own choice. Some might say adding ads is being a sell-out.. I'd just... Meh idunno, I'd say don't go with ads for the first few animations. They won't bring you that much revenue either way, wich will just have that annoying ad there for no point at all. Perhaps later on, when they fulfill their purpose a lot more.
4.
Your own choice, I'd say it's a good way to make sure people know it's your animation. But it could also be very pricky.. But to have it serving as a watermark to your own good (if someone stole your animation and put it on their site) I'd say go for it.
Hope some of it helped, I realised I wrote a lot.. Meh, your choice if you read the entire thing or not =d
Well if you read my wall of text, I should surely read the responding wall of text I requested no? The ideas are great, I'm essentially down to deciding whether I should sketch out every frame in my sketchbook or sketch out key frames (as you suggested) then attempt to interpolate the in-between frames. I've tried that before, it turned out okay I guess.
If anyone else reads this, is color crucial to my animation? I'm terrible at coloring, and while I"m entirely aware that black and white animations can succeed, would it be in my best interest to put in color if I can (if it's in black and white it wouldn't be for symbolism or anything, I just don't usually doodle with color).
At 8/3/11 03:04 PM, webufs wrote: Well if you read my wall of text, I should surely read the responding wall of text I requested no? The ideas are great, I'm essentially down to deciding whether I should sketch out every frame in my sketchbook or sketch out key frames (as you suggested) then attempt to interpolate the in-between frames. I've tried that before, it turned out okay I guess.
If anyone else reads this, is color crucial to my animation? I'm terrible at coloring, and while I"m entirely aware that black and white animations can succeed, would it be in my best interest to put in color if I can (if it's in black and white it wouldn't be for symbolism or anything, I just don't usually doodle with color).
Coloring takes some time to master watch this video by Johnnyutah
but I think that it would be much better to have color in your flashes though there is a group of flashes that have become quite successful in black and white the majority of successful flashes are in color.
At 8/3/11 03:24 PM, Alex616 wrote: Coloring takes some time to master watch this video by Johnnyutah
http://vimeo.com/18234522
but I think that it would be much better to have color in your flashes though there is a group of flashes that have become quite successful in black and white the majority of successful flashes are in color.
I don't get it, why is coloring such a hard task? Just draw and color some different characters, it should come easily. There will always be some hard task to color but just keep looking for the right color in the palette.
But it was a fun tutorial alright. Never seen it, so atleast it gave me a good laugh =D
At 8/4/11 08:31 AM, MortalFudge wrote: I don't get it, why is coloring such a hard task? Just draw and color some different characters, it should come easily. There will always be some hard task to color but just keep looking for the right color in the palette.
But it was a fun tutorial alright. Never seen it, so atleast it gave me a good laugh =D
yep JohnnyUtah is pretty funny but Coloring and shading do take some time to master
At 8/4/11 08:31 AM, MortalFudge wrote: I don't get it, why is coloring such a hard task? Just draw and color some different characters, it should come easily. There will always be some hard task to color but just keep looking for the right color in the palette.
But it was a fun tutorial alright. Never seen it, so atleast it gave me a good laugh =D
Heyoz, just wanna clarify something as it applies to me (possibly and probably others, but at the very least it pertains to me!). Sometimes I know how I would go about doing something, but because it seems like it would be such a daunting task, I look and ask for different ways to approach it. As such, if I were to color/shade something, my method may have been similar (probably more archaic D:) to the one in the video, but knowing that that's pretty much how it has to go lets me accept that animating is simply something that requires a lot of time and effort. I knew that before, but watching those videos lets me know what "a lot" means.
Now I need to learn to cut down on walls of text :(
At 8/4/11 11:51 AM, webufs wrote: Heyoz, just wanna clarify something as it applies to me (possibly and probably others, but at the very least it pertains to me!). Sometimes I know how I would go about doing something, but because it seems like it would be such a daunting task, I look and ask for different ways to approach it. As such, if I were to color/shade something, my method may have been similar (probably more archaic D:) to the one in the video, but knowing that that's pretty much how it has to go lets me accept that animating is simply something that requires a lot of time and effort. I knew that before, but watching those videos lets me know what "a lot" means.
Now I need to learn to cut down on walls of text :(
For got this tutorial too (sorry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt5--mDo9 x8&feature=channel_video_title
Hurm... I decided that color would be a good thing to have in my animation, so I added color, then later decided that some shading would help, after which I decided that maybe I could replace black outlines with colored outlines. However, it doesn't seem to work with everything, so I'm wondering if it would be okay to have some colored outlines and some black outlines? For now, I'm not planning to have anything in the picture moving, and a (kind of low quality) screenshot can be found here. Would it be acceptable as is?
At 8/4/11 01:09 PM, webufs wrote: Hurm... I decided that color would be a good thing to have in my animation, so I added color, then later decided that some shading would help, after which I decided that maybe I could replace black outlines with colored outlines. However, it doesn't seem to work with everything, so I'm wondering if it would be okay to have some colored outlines and some black outlines? For now, I'm not planning to have anything in the picture moving, and a (kind of low quality) screenshot can be found here. Would it be acceptable as is?
It looks better with color outlines here's a tip choose out the colors before you color everything (including the outline).
At 8/4/11 11:51 AM, webufs wrote:At 8/4/11 08:31 AM, MortalFudge wrote: I don't get it, why is coloring such a hard task? Just draw and color some different characters, it should come easily. There will always be some hard task to color but just keep looking for the right color in the palette.Heyoz, just wanna clarify something as it applies to me (possibly and probably others, but at the very least it pertains to me!). Sometimes I know how I would go about doing something, but because it seems like it would be such a daunting task, I look and ask for different ways to approach it. As such, if I were to color/shade something, my method may have been similar (probably more archaic D:) to the one in the video, but knowing that that's pretty much how it has to go lets me accept that animating is simply something that requires a lot of time and effort. I knew that before, but watching those videos lets me know what "a lot" means.
But it was a fun tutorial alright. Never seen it, so atleast it gave me a good laugh =D
Now I need to learn to cut down on walls of text :(
I can agree with you on the fact that some tasks that become too much a hassle usually begs for a "hey guys, how can I approach this" thread.
I guess it just grows into you. Like that Bitey video posted, I've done almost the same way (except I don't keep my palette in my library, it's just in an empty layer). Also I shade and brighten by drawing a pencil colour (like the JohnnyUtah video) around, and color inside it.
Speaking of wich, his "Erase pencil" is good, but here's a better tip: Just draw another line of the same pencil colour to connect the lines that are already there. Double click on them, click delete. Simple.
I hope it helped.. Didn't mean to be snotty or anything. As I might have said, I'm no pro, for sure.
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