Any tips for a semi-beginner?

[aquaninja]

Ok, hello. I've been into animating for a few years now, and you can probably already tell i'm not that great, but anyway, I was hoping anybody with experience with macromedia flash 8 could give me any tips or tricks on how to learn the program, cause I sure has hell don't know what I'm doing. So thanks for taking the time out of your busy life to read this, and I hope to see you in the comment section, or whatever the hell it's called.

[dylan]

Watch tutorials and practice; that's really the best possible advice. What you watch really depends on what type of work you hope to do. Wanting to do frame-by-frame animation? Spazkid has a series of tutorials that covers pretty much everything you need to get started. Oney has a few as well. There are some other great ones you can find on YouTube as well, but I can't recall them at the moment. Just be on the lookout.

Go buy a copy of "The Animator's Survival Kit".

Know what you're getting into. Trying to do a five minute short may be too much for one of your first animations, stick to shorter practice pieces until you feel comfortable. Completing four pieces in two or three months will be much more fruitful to you than completing one piece in the same time frame.

Do practice pieces. Do simple things that you don't plan to actually submit anywhere (save for perhaps a small compilation for a chunk of your reel). These will help you understand the process more in depth. Spend a few hours trying to make a realistic splash, things like that. These will not only help you to become a better animator, but may even be useful as templates for future finished pieces.

Finally, always be animating. You've got an hour to kill? Animate. Not tired yet? Animate. Broke a leg? Animate. Prom date find someone else? Animate. Taking a quick break for some video games? Nope, you're animating.