Advice to the flash newbies

[StealthBeast]

Glossary:

1: Should I look up to a flash artist?

2: am i over or underconfident?

3: I suck at a particular part in flash, should i be worried?

4: im getting SICK of animating this, should i force myself to animate anyway?

5: why am i not learning?!?!?! How can i stay into flash?!?!

I have some advice to the newbies. this is not an actual guide, this a physcological guide, maybe you more advanced people may want to scim through it too.

now alot of "newbs" are talentless people who make stupid flashes and put NO WORK whatsoever or patience into an animation.

BUT there are newbs who actually put forth effort and try and try and try and just keep getting blammed! its not their fualt their just ignorant

to all of you newbies out there who try i can only tell you what i felt and what i know and what mistakes ive done

when i first started flash i didn't even know what a layer or frame was, i didn't learn from a book, i learned from hard ass work and my own dedication (and i cant say i did it all on my own, my friend Jjokerdude is his username gave me that kick-start of info i desperatley needed)

So im here to give you self-tuaght newbs a bit of advice, something i kinda wish someone told me 2 years ago.

1: People will tell you "haha stop trying to imitate zhu's xiao" or "haha stop trying to imitate krinkle's madness" or "haha stop trying to imitate randy solems sonic VS mario" as much as it hurts for me to say this, DONT LISTEN TO THEM. when you try to imitate someone or animate like someone your better off. an example could be a big brother, lets say there is a little brother who looks up to his big brother, well the little brother loves to play basketball and trys to play like his big brother. while the little brother may not right now be amazing like his big brother, the little brother has a role model. this big brother who the little brother looks up to may do much better then if he were an only child with no-one realistic to look up to. the same way works, my role model was xiao for the longest time but after awhile i didn't need a role model but dont worry about that. the point is its actually a GOOD thing to look up to an artist.

*This next part is split into 2 areas, if you really like the work you do go to 2a if you are discouraged and feel like you work is crap and useless and even you hate it go to 2b.

2a. I was a 2a type of person and probabley still am. there is one thing you have to realise when you make an animation. its good for you to be learning and its good your getting better, but you have to look into someone elses eyes. act like youve never animated before and youve never seen this and it was submited into the portal. thing about how the animation is. how would u review it? graphics? sound? interactivity? overall? originality? you may realise you arent as awsome as i think, i have to do this to myself sometimes. the only thing worse then getting too discouraged with yourself and hating your work and skill is thinking its awsome and rocks and should be on front page. if you have that feeling too strong it may slow your learning. but dont lose all confidence! its good to thjink a bit higher of your work then others might.

2b. well im not a 2b sort of person, im a 2a sort of person. but its basically 2a inverted. what you have to keep reminding yourself is that krinkles, zhu, legendary frog, randy solem, dan paladin or whoever you look up to, at one time used to be a useless pathetic newb who didn't know what a motion tween was. but they fought through their newby years and look at em now, loved and known. you have to have self esteem in your own talents because who will for u? pshhh, im not gonna, i dont give a shit about u, and neither do other people here. i care about newbies in general but im not gonna be over there patting your back as you have a nervous breakdown. get over it and youll see what you can become. ignore the comments of your ignorant friends.

3: everyone has talents and weaknesses. there are talented artists who just suck at certain things. look at tom fulp himself. look at pico, now is that bad drawing or what? his drawing skills remind me of an earthquak sketch. same with the famous xiao xiao 3, comepletley crappy drawings, sincerely sad. even krinkles at one time wasn't the best drawer. and ME, look at my animations. shit drawing. but now u have u remember our talents! look at tom fulps amazing programming skill, he programed a freakin video game (Alien hominid) . Xiao was a rediculously fluid animation, and krinkles is .... self explanatory.

4: AVOID BURNOUT! if you get sick of working on an animation series ur making then STOP, avoid burnout, work on something else, or even just stop workin period for awhile. its normal have an off day, or off week even an off month. only start worrying when you get like... and off 3 months or something. if u do get an off month then just force yourself to sit at the computer for awhile and just chill out and animate at a slow pace, just kick urself and maybe youll become re-inspired. dont force urself too hard

5: Okay, everyone reaches this point, some quicker or slower then others. its a peak point. its a time where you learn alot of basic and alot of advanced maybe even stuff and you reach a peak, sorta like... a hell level in your time. its when you dont seem to be getting better at all also when this happens you may lose inspiration, or ideas. then form there on you grow in small bursts , think of it as puberty sorta. Well im givin u the sex talk lol.
Now son/daughter... theres going to be a time when you kind of reach a depression sort of time... where youll have sort of mood swings that occure during these times, its when you lose inspiration to animate and just feel like chillin out. well if you cant learn to much more i have to tell you the beauty of co-animations... now.. its works like this, when 2 talented authors meet each other they will learn from each other and may at one point may want to have an animation, to do so they must combine their strengths and weaknesses and when this happens if everythin goes right an animation is born with traits from both authors. so basically what im saying (in a very corney and joking way) is that it may be a good thing to experiment teaming up with people and such.

Well im hope this helps a soul. if you need help IM me at Stealth Beest or E-mail me.

This post hits the EXACT limit mark. nice

[AGH]

5 is amusing. :)

There is some good advice here, I hope your thread stays around for a while. Let's hope the post length doesn't scare too many people off.

[Vengeance]

wow. that must have taken you a while to write. i had to learn from scratch as well. but i didnt get anyone teach me anything. i did it all by myself. some great advice but needs more people reading it

[KaynSlamdyke]

Actually suprisingly good reading.
Was expecting this post to be one of those "This is where you get Flash" and "Stop copying LF you n00b" threads, but it's actually some good solid advice. Most of which I'd dish out (I'm a 2b kind of person... we're ostentatious bastards we are ^_^)

Good thread. Hope it stays up on the first page for some time

[Riddlebox0202]

Shit dud thats some good advice and i suggest that everyone read it regardless of size only because the plethora of usefull information that can be obtained from it

[StealthBeast]

At 4/27/05 06:35 AM, Flash_kid wrote: wow. that must have taken you a while to write. i had to learn from scratch as well. but i didnt get anyone teach me anything. i did it all by myself. some great advice but needs more people reading it

well Jjokerdude actually only tuaght me what an object was lol. but it was enough

[StealthBeast]

woah this is incredibley user-friendly camera omg.

wow this is seriously gonna help me

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/...8/17/flashhacks.html?page=last

its a camera basically.

[JJokerDude]

Here's something else to inspire you: as Stealth Beast said, I only showed him objects (lol i was a noob and was showing him, for the first time, flash) in fact, i was so newbish i didnt use these objects; it was a crappily drawn stick figure animation; without tweening. I used to be frame-by-frame. I sucked. I still do, but atleast I do tweens now.

Stealth here got better than me. I am an example of somebody who doesn't put effort into his animations and, when I do, I give up on it after gathering materials for it finding out it was a horrible idea. the only submissions i had were submitted by this Beast. "the hacked portal" was done on his computer with his permission and mostly his effort. i sat and told ideas. also, there was a blammed animation: "dont piss on a radio". i fooled with some sounds in his sound folder with sound recorder. I sped up, reversed, sped, sped, sped, and cut/edited; until finally this explosion sounded like a buzz. I said "does this sound like a dryer machine buzzing after it's done?" and he replied "no, it sounds like somebody pissing on a radio".

even if it was a dumb idea, he did most of my work. Don't become a JJokerDude or a Josh Cianciulli (well, not for now, I'm gonna get better mwuuahuuhahhahahhah!) Try reading this over and over and become a Stealth Beast yourself. As he said, it's good to have a role model; i have none and need to think of one. okay, i'm gonna stop typing now.

hey, this reply hit exactly the... goddammit it ends at 4,975 nevermind...

[StealthBeast]

At 4/27/05 08:22 PM, JJokerDude wrote: Here's something else to inspire you: as Stealth Beast said, I only showed him objects (lol i was a noob and was showing him, for the first time, flash) in fact, i was so newbish i didnt use these objects; it was a crappily drawn stick figure animation; without tweening. I used to be frame-by-frame. I sucked. I still do, but atleast I do tweens now.

Stealth here got better than me. I am an example of somebody who doesn't put effort into his animations and, when I do, I give up on it after gathering materials for it finding out it was a horrible idea. the only submissions i had were submitted by this Beast. "the hacked portal" was done on his computer with his permission and mostly his effort. i sat and told ideas. also, there was a blammed animation: "dont piss on a radio". i fooled with some sounds in his sound folder with sound recorder. I sped up, reversed, sped, sped, sped, and cut/edited; until finally this explosion sounded like a buzz. I said "does this sound like a dryer machine buzzing after it's done?" and he replied "no, it sounds like somebody pissing on a radio".

even if it was a dumb idea, he did most of my work. Don't become a JJokerDude or a Josh Cianciulli (well, not for now, I'm gonna get better mwuuahuuhahhahahhah!) Try reading this over and over and become a Stealth Beast yourself. As he said, it's good to have a role model; i have none and need to think of one. okay, i'm gonna stop typing now.

hey, this reply hit exactly the... goddammit it ends at 4,975 nevermind...

wow, you have some serious self-esteem problems josh lol.

i was about to give up in the very beginning, even if not significant you made a signifigant difference. You were a spark for me, that spark started a forest fire lol.

the fact that you arent good isn't because of your gay computer or limited recources, its your self confidence, and if u dont put forth some effort and get this "i suck at life" aditude otu of your head you will never succeed at anything. what makes you different from me? self confidence. just look at it in perspective a bit..

[JJokerDude]

At 4/27/05 08:32 PM, StealthBeast wrote:

hey, this reply hit exactly the... goddammit it ends at 4,975 nevermind...

wow, you have some serious self-esteem problems josh lol.

i was about to give up in the very beginning, even if not significant you made a signifigant difference. You were a spark for me, that spark started a forest fire lol.

the fact that you arent good isn't because of your gay computer or limited recources, its your self confidence, and if u dont put forth some effort and get this "i suck at life" aditude otu of your head you will never succeed at anything. what makes you different from me? self confidence. just look at it in perspective a bit..

(SHHHHH I'M JUST TRYING TO MAKE YOUR POST SEEM MORE HELPFUL AND HOW MUCH BETTER YOU GOT THAN ME...) i mean... i have no attitude here man im just too lazy to work on it and whenever i do push myself i add like 3 frames... whooooo... hey, y am i taking up reply threads when i can just IM u... nevermind...

[Tombulgius]

Awesome advice man, thank you very, very much.

[StealthBeast]

At 4/27/05 08:36 PM, JJokerDude wrote: (SHHHHH I'M JUST TRYING TO MAKE YOUR POST SEEM MORE HELPFUL AND HOW MUCH BETTER YOU GOT THAN ME...) i mean... i have no attitude here man im just too lazy to work on it and whenever i do push myself i add like 3 frames... whooooo...

Because its not like u only do this every once and awhile! everything that you do or try its all just putting urself down and calling urself a newb. if you dont believe in yourself then how can u expect anyone else to believe in u>?

[StealthBeast]

At 4/27/05 06:35 AM, Flash_kid wrote: wow. that must have taken you a while to write. i had to learn from scratch as well. but i didnt get anyone teach me anything. i did it all by myself. some great advice but needs more people reading it

hey, is your sig pointing to this topic or is that just me

[StealthBeast]

should i also post this in the general forum?

noobs are generally the ones who can't buy the software.

[Edvin]

At 4/28/05 02:31 AM, holymoon wrote: noobs are generally the ones who can't buy the software.

Are you telling me that rich people are not noobs? I KNEW IT!

[LazyKenny]

Now how about some advice on laziness? Laziness is whats stopping me from getting my ass to work. Write down on how to conquer it.

Also, another problem I'm having is that whenever I write, I tend to end up making the movies too long (usually 6 minutes).

[AGH]

At 4/28/05 01:45 AM, StealthBeast wrote: should i also post this in the general forum?

I don't know that they'd appreciate it for what it is, you'd probably get 10 different people telling you to post it in the Flash Forum. It still might be worth a try.

Just thought I'd let you know that I posted a link to this here.

[deslona]

At 4/27/05 02:35 AM, StealthBeast wrote: Lotsa stuff

Truer words have never been spoken

[pn-theman]

Stealth i like it good sh*t man it was definatly worth writing i 2a and i was getting to that give up point cause i can picture all this good as shit with a good story line but i just can put it into reality but that gave me a bita inspiration. so i might not be able to murder out a flash in a week but when its done i hope its as good or better than i can imagine.

[Jessequest12354]

At 4/28/05 07:22 AM, pn_theman wrote: Stealth i like it good sh*t man it was definatly worth writing i 2a and i was getting to that give up point cause i can picture all this good as shit with a good story line but i just can put it into reality but that gave me a bita inspiration. so i might not be able to murder out a flash in a week but when its done i hope its as good or better than i can imagine.

haha exactly the same with me.

i can picture a complete setup and storyline with detail and perfect movment but when i try i get over-wealmed.

i dont know WHY i get overwealmed because when i do get over it and try to make what i thought it always comes out as good as i planned if not better.

someones gotta write me a guide on that

[BeaverElfEater]

lol i abosolutley suck at flash, i kno most of the mechanisms I JUST CANT DRAW!!

[robgreen]

Will anyone be willing to help me out ? either give me some ideas for flash of maby tell me how to draw backgrounds
???

[StealthBeast]

At 4/29/05 10:44 AM, robgreen wrote: Will anyone be willing to help me out ? either give me some ideas for flash of maby tell me how to draw backgrounds
???

backrounds?

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/140001

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/140062

may want an art teacher if this doesn't do it.

[StealthBeast]

At 4/29/05 12:49 AM, BeaverElfEater wrote: lol i abosolutley suck at flash, i kno most of the mechanisms I JUST CANT DRAW!!

u dont need to draw to animate well.

i rock at as you call "mechanism", i cant draw either.

[StealthBeast]

At 4/28/05 02:40 AM, LazyKenny wrote: Now how about some advice on laziness? Laziness is whats stopping me from getting my ass to work. Write down on how to conquer it.

Also, another problem I'm having is that whenever I write, I tend to end up making the movies too long (usually 6 minutes).

laziness is your own problem. if ur lazy thats u, thats your fualt, thats your stupd lazy ass fualt. but remember u might not be lazy, i used to think i was lazy but i compared and contrasted the situations and its not that i was lazy, just not inspired.

maybe ur just not inspired

[BlackmarketKraig]

Well I'm not really a n00b. Actually, I'm (for now) rated in the top 50 artists, still don't know how that happened...

But anyway, this post is just the sort of thing I needed to keep my spirits up. So thanks for that! Really great post!
:D

[BLUEleaf]

I'm a perfectionis, you should have added that. I don't finish my movies because I always feel they aren't good enough to get the score I want...

[BLUEleaf]

*Perfectionist, dear god I am a disgrace to the grammar nazi kind... Especially after I just woke up

[AGH]

At 5/2/05 01:30 AM, BlackmarketKraig wrote: Well I'm not really a n00b. Actually, I'm (for now) rated in the top 50 artists, still don't know how that happened...

It's because you are a brilliant and unique artist & animator. I love it when artists who deserve credit actually get it, and you are definately one of them.