A few basic questions.

[stonex]

Okay so I started animating 4 weeks ago. I made 2 cartoons which cann be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/stonexNG?feature=mhee

Anyway during time using flash for the first time I got some questions:

1) I seem not to be able to draw one fucking straight line. Like I go really slow on my graphic tablet but it always gets a bit fuzzy and I dunno. Does it have something to do with the smoothing of the brush tool? I put it to 41.

2) The post production. See I only worked with Sony Vegas regarding video editing so far. I mainly put my voice audio in flash so I can animate the mouth properly but all the rest like music, sound effects and credits and stuff I post edit in sony vegas. I noitced a loss of quality when I exported it from vegas. Should I do ALL the editing in flash right away?

3) Can anyone give me the basic ideas of export settings? I watched a lotta tutorials but they just confused me on framerate, dimensions and audio rate. Like how to properly export a file from flash?

That'd be it so far, if you could also give me some critics or advices on my two animations up there I'd appereciate that a lot.

Thanks my fellow animator community!

[WiLiAm98]

At 1/20/13 08:48 AM, stonex wrote: Okay so I started animating 4 weeks ago. I made 2 cartoons which cann be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/stonexNG?feature=mhee

Anyway during time using flash for the first time I got some questions:

1) I seem not to be able to draw one fucking straight line. Like I go really slow on my graphic tablet but it always gets a bit fuzzy and I dunno. Does it have something to do with the smoothing of the brush tool? I put it to 41.

2) The post production. See I only worked with Sony Vegas regarding video editing so far. I mainly put my voice audio in flash so I can animate the mouth properly but all the rest like music, sound effects and credits and stuff I post edit in sony vegas. I noitced a loss of quality when I exported it from vegas. Should I do ALL the editing in flash right away?

3) Can anyone give me the basic ideas of export settings? I watched a lotta tutorials but they just confused me on framerate, dimensions and audio rate. Like how to properly export a file from flash?

That'd be it so far, if you could also give me some critics or advices on my two animations up there I'd appereciate that a lot.

Thanks my fellow animator community!

I loved the Batman animation! Really found it funny, I'll do my best to answer the questions but I think it might be a good idea if someone with more experience answered them for you.

1. If you want a perfect straight line use the "Line tool", you can also get lines more straighter by turning the smoothness up all the way.

2. I'd sugget going to an Adobe product for effects and stuff, Premiere elements is a good one if you don't have much skill skill with Adobe products but if you do have skill I would suggest After Effects or Premiere Pro as I also notice that Sony Vegas takes the quality on videos down so I try to stay away from that as much as possible.

3. I can't really help you as I haven't much experience with that.

[dylan]

1. If you want perfectly straight lines, use the line tool. If you meant your brush tool, try drawing from the elbow instead of the wrist. If you use your wrist, you end up with some crappy, squiggly lines because your wrist will go off at all sorts of small, minute angles that will mess with the art. Your elbow can give you great straight lines that still have that hand drawn look to them. Other than that, it's just command/control z until you get it right. Edit undo will become your best friend.

2. Never used Sony Vegas myself, but that shouldn't matter too much. What format (WAV, MP3, etc.) are you exporting to? That's probably where your problem lies.

3. Are you wanting to export to SWF (Newgrounds) or MOV (YouTube, Vimeo)?

Quick note: This lil' guide is based on Flash CS3; the ideas should hold true for other versions/programs, but they may require different routes.

SWF is super simple, go to File > Publish Settings > formats tab, check the Flash (.swf) box, and click on the Flash tab. The main thing to do here is go to the audio section and make it as high quality as you need. MP3 compression at 160kbps should be good, as long as it doesn't make your file too large.

MOV gets a bit tricky.

Start with File > Export > Export Movie, then name it and select a place to save.

The next box you'll see should have render width and height at the top. This is the size that Flash will export the movie at. You'll probably want to change this to HD dimensions for YouTube. Make sure that the "maintain aspect ratio" box is checked and then alter the dimensions to whatever size you choose. 1280x720 is fine (1920x1080 is better but a larger file) if you're working in 16:9 (i.g. a 640x360 stage size). For 4:3 aspect ratios, you'll have to look up HD dimensions, because I don't have any memorized.

Now move onto "QuickTime settings."

Video > Settings. Compression type H.264 should be fine, and set the frame rate to current. Key Frames to all. Compressor quality to best, with best quality (multi-pass) encoding. Click OK.

Video > Size. Again, if you're working in 16:9, 1280x720 is fine, 1920x1080 is better. Click the "preserve aspect ratio using" box and select letterbox.

Sound > Settings. MPEG-4 at 44.1 kHz set to stereo should be fine.

Check the "Prepare for internet streaming" box, and select Fast Start.

Click OK.

Export and wait. If you notice problems in the final video, tweak the settings to taste.