Made first animation, questions...

[Howarth17]

I'm not sure how to include it in the post if I could but heres a link to it.

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/a5408eb3fbc0282830d06362 aaa6327d

So as you might be able to tell my guys head and limbs don't stay the same size throughout the whole animation. How important is that when animating stuff? Do you guys redraw the character every frame or copy and paste some stuff? Anyway Thanks.

[Sub-vibe]

If you're using flash, find the Onion Skin - it's under the frames. It will help you out from the last frame to draw the next frame. It will appear as gray if you're in the next frame. Just draw the character slowly moving from the gray part.

[Howarth17]

At 5/23/13 01:39 AM, Sub-vibe wrote: If you're using flash, find the Onion Skin - it's under the frames. It will help you out from the last frame to draw the next frame. It will appear as gray if you're in the next frame. Just draw the character slowly moving from the gray part.

Thanks for the reply! You know how if you make a symbol it saves it in the library so you can use it again if you want? If I draw like a guys arm or leg bent and then straight can I save that in the library to use it again? Or symbols only?

[KameStudios]

Keeping a consistency with your character is important its the bases of what we consider animation You can alter the character a bit when he moves but thats because no character looks the same in there movements, preferably drawing the character over and over again will get you the most realistic effect but its also the keeping them looking the same, this gets easier as you animate more and more, look at this of mine and you'll see what i mean feel free to download it and study it for yourself. its frame by frame so i redrew everything to get the right feels hope it helps!

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/bc393bbef216c68fcd4ee7a7 751811dc

[Howarth17]

At 5/23/13 02:24 AM, Awkw0rdTurtle wrote: Keeping a consistency with your character is important its the bases of what we consider animation You can alter the character a bit when he moves but thats because no character looks the same in there movements, preferably drawing the character over and over again will get you the most realistic effect but its also the keeping them looking the same, this gets easier as you animate more and more, look at this of mine and you'll see what i mean feel free to download it and study it for yourself. its frame by frame so i redrew everything to get the right feels hope it helps!

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/bc393bbef216c68fcd4ee7a7 751811dc

Thanks that was really cool! Did you redraw those guys every frame? Also do you draw like rough sketches of the animation first and then go back and make it look like you want it to?

[KameStudios]

Yep thats exactly how you do it i do redraw every frame but theres a thing called working on 1,2, and 3s this is where you extend the exposure of a single frame to the correct timing so i make more frames last longer then some in a way its a master of timing you just gotta work on it. i have this link like plastered all over the forums but i compiled a playlist of animators all over the net that have given out tutorials, give it a look, i highly recommend watching happy harry huha 2 how to cartoons tutorials first that guys a legend of online cartoons his tuts series is still going on so ill be updating the playlist every so often with new content hope it helps

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqBvYGskIV9KlhH_eSiHh7 KG-N6p38m9H&feature=mh_lolz

[grimview]

At 5/23/13 01:56 AM, Howarth17 wrote:

At 5/23/13 01:39 AM, Sub-vibe wrote: If you're using flash, find the Onion Skin - it's under the frames. It will help you out from the last frame to draw the next frame. It will appear as gray if you're in the next frame. Just draw the character slowly moving from the gray part.

Thanks for the reply! You know how if you make a symbol it saves it in the library so you can use it again if you want? If I draw like a guys arm or leg bent and then straight can I save that in the library to use it again? Or symbols only?

If your using Graphic symbols will help keep size consistent. A best practice is to break everything up and to line up with the "+" as your pivot point. So you can draw single line in one graphic symbol [ +--------- ] then create a figure graphic where each piece of the arm is a layer, using the "+" at the joints[ elbow, shoulder, knee, etc] { o-----+------O-----+------o]. Now you can select one or more layers [Upper Arm Right, Lower Arm Right, etc] and rotate on the pivots [+]. At this point you can, as other said, use the onion skin, but now you can also use tweening. Tweening works best with one graphic per layer. You can also change the color of the graphic you add to movies so you can reuse a sequence for several different colored people. Additionally you can combine animated graphic, like bottom [run, walk, stand] loops, with different top [arms in air, arms with different weapons, swinging arms] loops.

[meridianisdead]

Personally I prefer a combination of frame by frame and symbol based animation.