Frame by frame animation help

[Hero101]

So I am currently working on a few animations but none of them are frame by frame and I want some insight on it please.

What's standard for fbf animations. Do you make symbols and then just duplicate them everytime and edit the duplicate? Do you even use symbols at all? Do you just draw, new keyframe, erase and redraw and use the onion skin tool to see how the previous frame looked?

I really would like to know what you guys think! Your answers will determine how I go about doing fbf animations from now on! :D

[SkySausage]

It depends on what kind of animation you're doing. If you're just changing the shape of something, you can use the selection tool to drag/bend a line by a little every frame. Or if you're doing something really complicated like an explosion, you can redraw every frame from nothing (it can be tedious. I don't like it)

[ZekeySpaceyLizard]

You can combine reusing symbols with completely redrawn frames too, ya know.

Best way to find out what works for you is to experiment.

But you definitely want to use the ONION SKIN feature. Which is those little blue rectangle button things under your main flash timeline next to the frame speed thing.

Thats pretty much the best thing ever, right there.

[FanGoof]

Ye im kinda of in the same boat....what about using movie clips? Is tht an effective way to animate...say.. a person walking accross the screen?

[tooters]

At 3/13/08 07:15 AM, FanGoof wrote: Ye im kinda of in the same boat....what about using movie clips? Is tht an effective way to animate...say.. a person walking accross the screen?

if the character is going in a straight line and the camera isn't rotating or anything, yeah you can just animate a fbf walk cycle inside of a movie clip and tween however you want. But if your character is walking around a corner or something you won't be able to tween much of that.

[Ansel]

Also, the way most pro animators do fbf is to draw the "keyframes" first. They're the major important poses in the animation. Then, they space them out to get the timing right and add the "inbetweens," which are the frames between keyframes.

In big, inustrialized animation studios, sometimes two completely different people will do the keyframes and in-betweens. However, I personally think that's no good at all. The original animator may have a vision for how it will turn out, but then the other will muck it up and it'll be completely different.

Ah, well, good luck with fbf. I personally have no patience for it :C