Any Advice as far as Symbols?

[Jawnduss]

i never know what order to place my symbols in... or like, what symbols to have when animating people. like Head, eyes, nose, mouth, torso, legs, arms, hands, etc. if anyone had any helpful advice? i'd appreciate it. :)

[kmau]

That's hard to explain without showing a graphic but the basic principle is that if a body parts' movement depends on another ones movement, he's goes into that symbol.

Example: The lower arm inevitably moves if the upper arm moves, hence the lower arm symbol goes into the upper arm symbol. An exception would be if the hand grabs an inmovable object then.. wow I just realized I do all this subconciously and can't really explain it at all.

[Halvgoeden]

Do you mean layer order? It really depends on what visual order you want things to appear on screen. If you want something to be on top of something else, it is higher up in the layer hierarchy.

Just create symbols as you need them according to workflow. If you need something out of the way or it's making editing something else difficult, make it a symbol. If you want to be able to change the way something looks after it's been animated, make it a symbol.

Let me know if this helps. If you have any specifics about your problem it would help me to understand the issue.

[wreckr]

I usually only use the mouth, and eyes. I tend to animate FBF so I don't really use a lot of symbols for my characters. What I can suggest though is using a lower leg, an upper leg (thigh), lower arm, upper arm, chest, head, eyes, mouth, and eyebrows.

That's all I can think of for now and it should be more than enough.

[Celshaded]

Best advice i can give you:

Always name your layers.
Always name your symbols.
Also name your folders/sub folders.

It may seem like a simple thing, but when you get to the point where you have hundreds of individual symbols things can get hectic. It's a good habit to get into.