FrozenFire 2010-11-17 23:11:27

"How to be Uber" - Hnilmik

FrozenFire 2010-11-17 23:36:25

I use a combo of tween and FBF.
When fbf is not particularly necessary like when moving a symbol across the screen, or slightly tilting a head... I'll tween it.

I'd say Oney has a similar animation method.

Desknight 2010-11-18 00:21:55

1. Goodness no, you ever watch cartoon network? Besides you can just look at yourself in the mirror if you want a good idea. Just make sure you yourself know the anatomy e.i. "I want his legs as long as his torso." and keep it that way.

2a. I suppose you'd need a lot of time, patience, and skill/experience, I do not think you can make a great frame by frame on your first shot. 2b.) A.E. Chronics is almost totally tweened and looks really good, the only downside is that you may notice repition in the appearance of characters.

3. Don't know what you mean, if it's frame speed I go 25, actual time to make flash I have no actual experience I'm just using logic and what others say, you need someone else. (It truly depends, how much frame by frame, how much time you can put, etc., etc.)

4. I had this problem at first but the answer is to THINK LONG TERM! What are your MOST original ideas, those are the ones that you should save for last (doesn't mean you can't work on them now), but you want to make good when you get into the big leagues. Of course this doesn't mean make a fan-fic either, that's just playtime.
For now use an idea that is SOMEWHAT original, but you know it has a lot of "seen it before" elements.

5. Again, depends really on how you want it, planning things out will make the animation much deeper and complex while doing it on a dime will make it simple and random. I guess plan out serious works and go along with comedies.

6. Well I think this is a process of its own, 1st step should be get your concept, main characters, and overall story flow/length thought out, 2nd step would next be important second characters and events, Finally I think you should begin individual episodes now that you have a basic outline.
Again this still depends on how deep/simple you want the serious to be, the more comical it is the less planning, seriousness needs to be truly thought out.

7. I'd get the audio first and go with it because you don't want a scene to end abruptly on a tense part of a song or for voices to keep going beyond lip-sync. It's all precaution really since its a pain to go back.

8. ....What? That programming? XD (I'm almost as new as you to this.)

9. Eh, no, sorry, I just go onto Youtube, look at how to use the tools and that's about it. If I see something in an animation that isn't shown in any tutorial I would pester the animator on how to do it or try to figure it out on my own with what I know.

10. Too many things, going from my own personality and deep-dark self, to normal media, and big issues that are usually kept hushed. The world is an influence, take whatever you want, rip it apart, and put it together with something else so that no one can guess how you came up with something.

11. ....yes? ....no? ....Why are you asking?!

12. Ones that stood for me are Animemunters and Complex. They're both extremely well done with their own styles.

13.
Zeurel- Animations are liquid because he uses a blur effect for many speedy movements that are otherwise unnoticeable. He also has more color in his flash than a skittles factory. Finally you need to see his devotion, can you go over a week with only a few hours sleep to make a 10 minute long animation on top of just living life and having a job?
Yungjazz- His stories are interesting and animation is top notch. His stuff clearly has a lot of planning and his art style is one I'd like to dissect.
Scoot- Simple yet good, he only just began 2 animation series (one serious, one comical) and you can see he knows what he's doing. I like watching his work because I feel like I know how he animated his stuff.

14. I'm just a kid on NG, sorry.

15. Improvement? I've already used the word "dissect" right? "Dissect" is a word I use meaning I observe another person's art and try to understand it so that I can almost exactly know how that person made the art from first to last line. I use "dissect" because that's exactly how I do it, I mentally remove the chracter's clothing to see the underlying anatomy, "dissect" of all the various body parts into logical, movable parts, and finally decide which line was the first to be made so that the rest falls in place.
Beyond that, practice, practice, practice, and if you want to know anatomy just watch people and look at your own body in the mirror. I measured and compared my own body parts so now I can draw a guy pretty well I'll say.

Hope you had fun reading this, let me know if you're confused on anything. :P

boybogart 2010-11-18 00:38:01

Hey, hope you can learn from these:

1. Yes, you do need to know how to draw properly. There's just a lot of stuff to think about when animating(especially fbf), you don't want to add drawing problems to your timing problems. Tween animation is more forgiving than fbf though.

2. I didn't understand this question much but I'm assuming you're asking what does it take to make a tweened animation not make look like a noob tweened animation? Well, first up, your key poses should look good. Then, when you're transitioning from one pose to the next, do not just tween it and hope everything falls into place. You still need to fix the perspective of parts etc. Remember, tweening is just a tool, it will not think for you. You still need to add inbetweens. But one thing tweening is good is for settles.(the part in the action where the character's movement is about to stop)

3. My animating speed depends on the scene but I'm averaging 30 seconds per week. This is broadcast animation I'm talking about though, so the standards are a lot stricter.

4. I don't work on animating only one thing at a time. For example, In a month I work 3 weeks on my animation studio job, then the last week, I work on my own flash short. This way, I don't get burned out on my studio job and I also make progress on my own portfolio by doing my own work. Animating something becomes very old fast, so give this a try if you have a serious case of burnout.

5. Script first, storyboard second, finally the animatic where you time the music etc. Without these, it will be hard since you're thinking lots of things at the same time.

I'm too lazy to answer the rest but the thing is, as much as animation is an art form, it's also just a tool to tell stories. Some very good animators I know never get their own flashes done because they want it on a Disney-like level, which I know they could do, but would be so much time consuming. So these stories they have never get told. Don't worry about the level your skill is when you're starting a project, just work on it and most importantly, finish what you've started. I'm sure it will turn out great and you'll improve by leaps in time.

Last thing, try to delegate certain workload to friends or contacts you've made on NG. Doing script, audio, BG and animation is just too much for some people.

Good luck!

LyleRath 2010-11-18 00:40:28

You should really stop making front page posts on the days i randomly browse NG. It makes it seem like I'm stalking you.

....Which I'm not.

Seriously.

But anyways, even though I suck horribly at flash, I still know how it's done in theory so I'll offer some tips

1. Kind of. You need to know how to draw your characters. If you want them to be anatomically correct than yes. Perspective and at least a rough consistency is the key here. Anatomy is optional. Though it's always a plus to have some fancy pants art chops, as long as you can draw how you want things to look it's not mandatory to be super good.

2. No matter what you do, your animation is going to suffer a bit if you stick to tweens exclusively. You can integrate it into your flash as long as it isn't the front and center focus of animating. I would say the best i've ever seen a tweenimation done is "Doraleus and Associates" but even that has some noticeable shortcomings.

3. This depends on what I would have to animate. It's way too hard to ballpark.

4. It comes down to what fits into my schedule the most and what I most want to do. For you, I'd recommend starting with shorts. They'll let you hone your skills a bit and there's less pressure and time involved than there is for a series.

5. I do the audio ahead, then kind of skeleton the important frames on the actual project file similar to a storyboard.

6. If it's a plot driven series, it's good to at least have an outline before you start writing scripts. It just depends on how you want to do it and how inspired you are to write the script. If you think you have a clear vision of everything you want to do specifically, you can script out a whole series. I find it better to do actual scripts one at a time unless you're absolutely sure, because if you tweak any plot points later on, you'll have a lot of text to replace.

7. Audio first. Always. It's pretty much impossible to structure your animation without it. If you're doing a fight scene, you can add the punching, bullet sounds, etc. later on, but other than that, do your audio first.

8. next to none. Though if you're going to learn it, popular opinion is "3 is really fucking convoluted. Use actionscript 2."

9. no, sorry

10. I kind of have my own style that doesn't really draw on anything for inspiration directly. It's shit, but at least I can say it's mine.

11. Awwwwww yeaaaaaaah.

12. I really don't know

13. Happyharry, Spazkid, Egoraptor, that dude who makes those things with that goat creature, and Hulalaoo. Everything they make is very visually active and fun to watch.

14. I don't know if monty oum's stuff counts, but that dude makes some damn good action sequences. The work he did for Red Vs. Blue was fucking phenomenal.

15. I can't really tell you how to improve because I don't know your creative process or how you go about doing things. Everyone runs into different problems with this. For me personally, I think the biggest point of improvement was when I stopped trying to make every frame look perfect and just focused on making shit move around, then fixing what actually mattered later on. Also don't rush things. I'm sure sanity's animations would have looked a lot better if they weren't all done in one energy drink fueled sleepless evening.

Hope this helps.

...and hopefully you'll hate me less in December when I throw you infinity tons of built up lines for random short skits wherein you say things of questionable integrity.

Shit, I just realized I could have typed those all out in the time it took me to type this. I feel fucking retarded now. Ignore all my advice as it can't be trusted. :p

Miccool 2010-11-18 01:35:54

1. yes.. but I suck so gay
2. It doesn't look bad...
3. slow.. takes me a year to finish a 3 minute animation
4. I get ideas over time.. but since I'm so slow, I never do any of them
5. I try to storyboard, but the outcome of my animating always causes me to improvise in the end.
6. I try to plan a whole animation, but it never comes out the way I intended
7. After, I'm not so great with selecting music.. I just want to animate, then add it later.
8. Basics for animations
9. Watching replays on livestream have been really helpful recently
10. anime, cartoons, shorts, movies
11. yes
12. idk
13. Yutaka Nakamura... his stuff looks good
14. Le Royaume, monte oum stuff, crater face, tannokojo stuff, pantural stuff, Clouds, Pyrats
15. I like stuff

Kajenx 2010-11-18 01:37:58

1 - 2. Yes, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise or you'll just be frustrated. You can make bad animation with no skills at all if you don't care about it, but if you want to make good animation, you have to understand how drawing works in 3 dimensions. The only way to do that is to draw from life.

3. I don't animate for cartoons, so I can spend a lot of extra time on the loops for my games. The point is, though, take as much time as you need/want to. No one out there is animating quickly, so don't feel like you're being let behind. You can just make talking heads and occasional gestures if you want to go quick, but that's not really animation, is it?

4. It doesn't matter what you do, what's important is that you stick with it. If you get used to starting things without finishing them, you're just going to end up with a lot of fragments. Also, don't bother saving that great idea you have until you "get better." Once you're better, you'll have better ideas too. Animating will actually help you draw better because it'll force you to draw positions you aren't used to. It'll probably look terrible, but hey, you don't have to show anyone, right?

5. Do whatever keeps you motivated, if you like to just start, then do that until you hit a roadblock, then make a plan. If you go by the seat of your pants, though, you might end up cutting things and wasting time. People invented the whole animation process for a reason, after all: to save time, which saves money.

11. yes.

15. I believe no one is spontaneously creative. All our ideas come from somewhere. So, look at a lot of different art, read a lot of different stories, and fill your head with as many viewpoints as you can. They say a writer can't write well unless he reads a lot. Why is it any different for drawing or animation?

TheUnknownEntity 2010-11-18 02:06:40

1. I wouldn't say so, part of what animation is is the ability to... explore dis-proportionate characters (think just about every animated thing you've ever seen). On top of that, you're characters don't even have to be human (or, "100% human" so to speak)

2. It really depends, and in all honesty, animations with lots of tweens are generally looked down upon these days. Although there definitely are some really good ones such as NCH's "Pokemon Hunter". I think it also depends on the character models. I feel like characters can easily be designed to be tweened, but if you create, say, people, with the hopes of lots of character movement, tweening is not the way to go. All in all it is definitely easier than frame by frame though. Hopefully that helps / makes sense.

3. I myself am kind of slow, but I think a key point is motivation. If you actually work multiple hours a day instead of just working for one hour and web surfing for four then you can get stuff done quickly. Of course a lot of it depends on character / background detail. I would also assume lip syncing would be difficult to those who are not used to it (I haven't really touched on that ever hah)

4. I would just go with the idea that seems the most developed and does not require me to... over extend myself. I've had some pretty crazy ideas in my head before, animated the first 30 seconds and then got to a point and said, "shit, I have no idea how to draw this next thing at all" and then eventually give up. This actually happens to me a lot, since my art isn't great, but may not be a problem for accomplished artists.

5. I would say it's wise to storyboard the whole thing out and then animate, however I usually do it in increments (i.e storyboard the first minute, animate it, storyboard next minute, etc).

6. I would have a general idea of how it would all pan out, as well as key events that would happen down the road. However the actual events that connect them I come up with episode by episode

7. I'm actually a big soundtrack buff, and have over 2,000 songs of just soundtracks from games, movies, animations, etc. So to me, that kind of thing is important and I will usually have a pre made list of songs I would like to use. However I doubt it's like that for most people. I guess it all depends on how important music is for the series.

8. Just about enough to code menus really. I took a course (1/2 a year) on action script in my senior year of high school, and because of that I can read it fairly well.. but writing it? Bleh... In the long run, if you're just animation, "stop();" will be the only thing that's hard to live without

9. No sorry... I'm pretty much 100% self taught (over around 7 years :\). Although some good places to check (aside from just google) is Flashkit, deviantArt and here on Newgrounds. Also the flash forums here on NG or Flashkit are good places for asking specific questions

10. This is kind of hard to answer, so I'll just name a few
Adam Phillips (most people will say that hah)
Rtil (Metropolis Circuit, Lighthouse Girl, etc)
Adam Westerman (Nevermore series)
Samurai Jack (hell yeah)
Vinnie Veritas (the CCC guy)
and so on

11. I indeed can

12. Another hard one hah, so here's four in no particular order
Tarboy
The YuYu (and pretty much all the other Brackenwood flashes)
Metropolis Circuit
Bunnykill 4 (yeah yeah I know)
Nevermore 3 (It's a game, but it's worth checking out)
Enjoy your Heaven

13.While I answered the first half of this in #10, I'll just say I like animators who create incredibly unique and crazy worlds to set their stories in

14. Yeah sorry nothing comes to mind really

15. Take baby steps - don't shoot for the starts with your first (or second) animations

Wow... this is the longest reply I've ever written on here.

RubberNinja 2010-11-18 02:11:05

1. Do you NEED to know how to draw (like, "properly," knowing anatomy and proportions) before you animate? Especially for frame-by-frame animation?

Yes and no. Depending on the quality of work you want to put out, knowing your human anatomy back to front is a life saver. It's very tough to master it though, but well worth it. You can still produce entertaining content with very minimal art. I'm sure you can think of loads of examples.

2. What does it take to NOT make a n00bie tween/pivot animation? Know of any examples of GOOD tween/pivot animations?

What does it take? Good work ethic and know how. Starting out younger doing shitty tween animations did benefit me in the sense that I'm able to adapt weird little tricks in flash to create certain effects. But overall, with that as a starting point you're just super comfortable in the user interface.

3. What's your average "animating speed"? How long does it take for you to draw/animate something?

It depends. I work really well under stress.. Without deadlines I always find myself slacking. That's why I have to try and make them for myself. I'm currently working on 2 animations, both with early december deadlines.. So yeah, kinda stressed!

4. If you have a LOT of ideas for a LOT of series/animations, what helps you decide what to work on first/next?

Use a bit of foresight and decide which project can wait and which one is more urgent. If you're doing something that's topical, it's best to get that out first. If something is timeless, then you can take your time with it.

5. Do you animate/create as you go or do you plan ahead, like storyboard?

Yes and no. It depends on the project. Though I will always do an audio test (in flash) of the entire cartoon to make sure the timing of the scenes are all the way I want them.

6. For a series, how far ahead do you plan? One episode at a time or do you know how the whole series will pan out?

Back when I did Gamer Tonight for TV, I didn't really plan ahead beyond "I'll do this type of gamer, then this.. then maybe this." Most of it was just made up as I went along. But now with something like Gameoverse, I'm trying very hard to be sure that everything ties together. I really want it to work well as a progressive story. I currently feel it's lacking. So if a progressive story is your thing, be sure to plan ahead.

7. Do you get your audio-stuff together first and animate to it, or after? Why?

Absolutely. You'd be mad not to. There's all kinds of complications with animating with no sound. How do you expect to get the timing right? The lip sync? What about the actions? Laying out your audio work first is a very wise idea.

8. How much actionscripting do you know?

Fuck. All.

But enough to make a button work.

9. Know of any good tutorials?

Back when I first started to animate stuff for Newgrounds, I was told by my friend Nef to go check out these 3 basic tutorials by SoupClock on how to use the drawing tools in flash.

<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/141890">http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /141890</a>

<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/141925">http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /141925</a>

<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/142057">http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /142057</a>

These really helped get my head around the basics.

I posted a learning resource on my sites forum a long time ago.. If you go check it out I've got some useful learning links posted there to:
<a href="http://www.gamertonight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=798">http://www.gamertonight.net/forums/vi ewtopic.php?t=798</a>

10. What are your influences?

Growing up, I'd have to say the people who influenced me were..

Dan Paladin
Jhonen Vasques
Adam Phillips
Matt Wilson
John K

And probably a lot of other people I'm failing to mention right now.

11. Can you see the naked mermaid?

Is that below?

12. What are your favorite flashes? (Narrow it down to top 4 if you have too many!)

Seems like a generic answer now days, but the Brackenwood series is probably mine. Story of Khale, Tar Boy and WGJ4K are all great to.

13. What animators do you admire and why?

I'm going to say Harry. He's charming, musical, vocal and artistic. He's the whole package. I wish I was that much of a one man band.

14. Know of good, non-flash, non-"commercial", student animations? (I LOVE animations from Gobelins!)

I'm sure I have some in my YouTube favs.. But it'd take too long to look.

15. Other things I should know? Art improvement stories? (I started improving when I stopped comparing myself too hard to others + Began appreciating that we all have unique styles + Stepped away from anime and learned more from life)

Don't start off with trying to draw anime. You'll find it's a very anatomical dependent style. Judging by those drawings I'd say you're already doing alright for yourself! Just keep at it. Constantly keep a sketch book and try to fill it up every few months. You'll just automatically improve the more you draw, trust me. Try to observe other peoples work, learn different ways of doing things. Anyone can learn to use Flash, it's not hard. If you can already draw.. That's a HUUUUGE plus. I remember way back when Ego wasn't an animator. We were all nagging him to start animating (because his art was fucking amazing), which he eventually caved in on. With all of our help, he managed to learn flash extremely fast (most of it he taught himself). It's not as hard as you'd think.

BEST OF LUCK!

RubberNinja 2010-11-18 02:12:40

Also if you're stuck on anything in Flash, don't hesitate to bug me on Skype. I've taught Flash at a youth film school for 3 years, so I'm fairly good at explaining this stuff now.

zeedox 2010-11-18 02:26:44

1. Yes, animating is directly connected to your skill in drawing

2. It takes experience from making plenty of noobie ones, and finding and leaning ways of improving from them.

3. Mine is 60-120 minutes if I'm making a very detailed animation, 30-60 for something quicker.

4. I try to chose a project that I will learn the most from doing at the time.

5. Story-boarding usually. I sometimes make animations that I don't plan beforehand but there more experimental.

6. Good to have a rough plan for the entire series, one that you can keep modifying whenever you think of something cool.

7. Voices > then animation > music and sound effects. Unless its a specifically a music video.

8. Stop, play, make a button etc. And the ability to copy and paste a NG preloader or vcam :D

9. Not really, Im not much of a tutorial learning person.

10. For my art style mostly real life

11. yes

12. Waterlollies, The Stranger Forest, The Yuyu, Crows Life ep 3.

13. Jazza - seen him get better and better over time, and hes dedicated to making something bigger each time.
Adam Phillips - Shows what quality is possible and inspires a lot of other people to make their work better.
also The-Swain, Zeurel and SpikeVallentine

15. Those are some good points, agree with not comparing your work too hard with others, best to compare it with your own work so you improve. Other advice I'd give is focus on projects that are aimed at improving the areas you feel are you're weakest (could be backgrounds, timing, anatomy, script.storytelling etc.) Also embrace criticism and try and learn from it, even if the criticism is rude.

ikool 2010-11-18 03:04:20

Lots o walls o text in comments.

Good luck finishing uni! :D

Markface 2010-11-18 04:45:01

1. It's very, very helpful. Don't get me wrong, you can animate without this knowledge, but it's going to look like you animated everything with your dick. Anybody who answers no to this question either does not know what they're talking about or loves animating with their dick.

2. Effort. Sticks and pivot are slammed simply because they're simple animation guidelines that require little to no effort. A boring stick fight will be something 13 year old Billy whipped up after watching Xiao-Xiao and spent all but 2 hours on.

The greater stick fights and animations spend time and serious effort on their animation. Do not skip steps, even with sticks. Hell, with sticks you should be more focused on the animation and momentum of your characters as it takes little effort to manipulate them.

3. Depends. I usually animate at 12FPS, mind you I don't put much effort into my work. For short little experience pieces I do I work anywhere from 18-36FPS. There's nothing wrong with lower FPS rates, especially when you first start. If anything I'd recommend it. Start simple, then work on higher frame rates once you have more experience. Animations take me a while because I'm lazy.

4. I work on pieces I know I'll finish. Do not start something if you're not sure if you can finish it.

5. Bit of a mix. I usually think my animations up in everyday life, the idea sticks in my head and I animate from there.

6. I don't do series, nor would I want to. Your animations should be interesting and original, not dull, uncreative sitcom animations that consist of talk.

7. In between. If I've already animated my characters as they should talk I'd need to structure my voice acting around their body language. That sucks. I try to voice first as rarely will my voicing reflect the body language already animated.

8. A little bit. General movie actionscript. Not a huge amount is needed, anything fancy can be found on tutorials.

9. Newgrounds has a great tutorial page for actionscript, animation. Best tutorial is just practice.

10. Me.

11. Fuck off.

12. Rebecca, Sonic in Search For Love, Sasper, something else.

13. Marc M. is pretty cool.

14. No.

15. Just practice.

ZenithQuinn 2010-11-18 05:31:32

Well Frozen Fire you're right there about Oney. Mostly tweens and arm and mouth FBFs in Leo And Satan! The two longest fbf things in the newest leo and satan were the sneak walk out to the trash can and a part where satan turns his head to the left from behind view

VidGameDude 2010-11-18 06:40:04

^---all above Hnilmik overload lol
btw is the blue lady whichamacallit a rusulka?

l8s

RPGsrok 2010-11-18 11:42:20

I'm not that good myself, but some answers, in the hopes that they help you (tho seriously, I'm pretty sure at least one of these posts will).

1) It depends on how good you want to be. In general you want to, yes, even if you plan to exaggerate proportions and so forth. I'm only starting to learn now (just informally through books and sites) but even after just a month or so I think I'm improving in drawing and animating.

2) You need to know when and how to use tweens. If you use them for everything and don't put thought into how they look, you come off as a noob. Even with tweening there are subtle motions that you can use to sell your animation. Theweebl does a lot of tweening, here for example - <a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/443779">http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /443779</a> Note how the bodies of the owls contract a touch as they go up, and expand slightly as they move down.

3) Depends on the style. Going realistic or high framerate fbf, you can spend months on something less than a minute. On the other hand I've cranked out 3 minute animations in days for something simple. It's really hard to estimate, but plan on maybe an hour for 5 seconds at very very best?

4) I concentrate on what's most developed in my mind and what's most realizable. (though having just finished a two YEAR project, I can heartily say DONT DO SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE A HALF HOUR - BAD IDEA >_>) Take the ideas you have the most thought out, think them out more, figure out how long they would take, usually by writing the screenplay, for an estiment, and then the storyboard to get more detailed guesses (ie, how many cuts). As a beginner, I'd say take on a short project (short for ME being 5 minutes >_< but for you probably a minute at most) and just work from one project to the next.

5. I've been working as a go for a long time, but now I really am starting to storyboard everything and I've been scripting everything for a while now. It absolutely pays to plan ahead. Do it as much as you can, especially for longer projects.

6. I'm not sure if my two eps counts as experience, but here - series wise, I KNOW what will happen for everything, and it's kinda just a fun exercise for me to figure it out, but I script/plan in detail only one ep at a time. If you try and do the whole thing at once, you're just gonna be overwhelmed AND find at the end that you're earlier scripts sucked and want to redo them.

7. I get inspired by music, so I like to animate to it. It's not necessary though. Voices, however, you do want to have to animate to for lip sync.

8. I know enough to move around the animation via buttons - very basic stuff.

9. Practice is the best tutorial.

10. The serious anime works - Darker Than Black, Last Exile, Ghost in the Shell -series and movies with interesting concepts and visual styles, and many with good animation to boot.

11. Which one?

12. Future by Celarent. Old but good.

13. Pro-wise I admire Makoto Shinkai, who set out and made a half hour animation on his own, and now has like 10 people working with him on the stuff he wants to make.

14. I'd hafta think about it, sry.

15. You improve by practice - start working, you will get better. I've had little classes in flash and animation, but look at my stuff (actually that'll take too much time, but take my word when I say) humble as I am, I feel I've improved just by working things, making mistakes, learning on my own. Looking forward to your stuff!

lenkalamari 2010-11-18 12:29:39

i've got some free time this evening so i'll type out a mini bible for you. i havent read anybody else's posts so sorry if i retread some ground here

1. Not particularly. animation is mostly about storytelling, timing and communication. if you have these things nailed, then the drawings themselves dont have to be perfect at all (the best example of someone with very simple drawings but amazing animation/storytelling abilities would be don hertzfeldt). if you're going for something like anime or DC/Marvel superhero cartoons though i think an extensive knowledge of anatomy is almost vital - otherwise you end up with stuff that just looks plain goofy like a lot of 'anime' submissions that started to surface on NG in like 2003-2005 (xin for example).

2. look up kol belov. amazing use of tweens. dont be afraid to use and experiment with them. with some animations consistency is key, and tweens supply you with this shit really nicely

3. depends cuz there's a billion ways in which i animate stuff. for me its all about nailing the timing - excess stuff like colouring cels is your 'grind' work, and be prepared for more if you wanna add shades. the more work you put into it, the nicer its generally gonna look though (unless it gets overly busy or even 'overanimated' like the thief and the cobbler was)

4. always tackle the smallest project first - or more importantly, the one you think fits your current skill level

5. planning is so important. so so important. if you work out your beginning and end first, you've already crossed a load of obstacles that you'd get when animating straight ahead. not only that, but you've got to experiment in the planning stage - imagine animating straight ahead and then after releasing your cartoon you realized you could have had a much better ending, character designs etc etc. never rush

6. plan the entire thing out

7.audio is important to me mainly because i like timing things up with the audio - i generally like to have all my sound effects and lines first. but if you can find a good enough composer, you could wait until your flash is finished and have them put a score to it.

8.i know how to make a loader and a play button, i'm a fookin genius

9. animator's survival kit

10. akira toriyama, jamie hewlett, ancient culture, and oddly enough my friends. 90% of my characters are loosely based on people i know or knew

11. yeah. nice tits

12. uhhh wow this one is hard. i'll narrow it down to my four faves on NG: ballad of cripple kane, that fucking weird nick cage thing happyharry made, last resort, and uhhhh i dunno any marc m movie

13. ralph bakshi cuz he wasnt afraid to tell it how it is and exaggerate it at the same time. he's a cartoonist's cartoonist. i love chuck jones as well just because his timing is fucking amazing

14. i could dig out a ton for you but all my vimeo/youtube/dailymotion faves are bookmarks on my laptop cuz im a fuckin idiot

15. just draw every day and tackle areas where you're weak

Alfaleaf 2010-11-18 14:11:39

I'm basically in the same predicament as her. I've read most of the comments on this page so far and I find them very informative, so thanks Hnilmik for posting this and thanks to all the people who commented for all your information, it'll help me in the long run. :)

SWiTCH 2010-11-18 14:35:29

1. Not unless you want to animate humans with correct proportions and anatomy (which it seems like you do; so... yes). It's most important that you understand volume and how simple shapes move and turn in 3d space.

2. Learn about easing and squash and stretch.

3. I could animate a scene in 30 minutes or a week... The more effort I put in, the better it will be, generally. It's all deciding which shortcuts you can get away with while still turning out something nice. :P

4. Whichever I'm most excited about!

5. Definitely storyboard the whole thing. That's when I come up with all the best jokes/actions/story elements. Don't start animating 'til you've got every little scene planned out thoroughly. :)

6. Take it one episode at a time. and make sure each episode is self contained. The vast majority of flash series never get the ending they deserve. They all just fade away. Don't make big plans unless you have the drive to carry them out (and who does? By the time I finish a project I'm usually excited about a completely different one). Right now I'm working on a sequel to a movie I did 5 years ago... That's how long it took to come up with a follow-up I'm excited about..

7. I do it after. I don't want to limit my movie to how a song or sound effects play out. I have a general idea of how I want the music to fit, but I'll usually slap it on toward the end and adjust the timing on the animation to make it flow.

8. None. :P

9. Not really... I learned from watching my favorite animations and trying to understand how they work... And animating like a madman (at first).

10. Years ago it was Dan Paladin and Ryan Khatam (flathead, johnny rocketfingers). They were my biggest influences, though hopefully I've developed my own thing by now.

11. Wat

12. "Larvae", "A Short Flash About Clams"...

13. I don't watch much animation these days. Inspiration comes from other sources. That said, you know, I admire animators whenever I see some good shit. :P

14. Not off the top of my head.

15. I feel like I improved the most when I stopped looking to other animation/animators for inspiration. There's a world of inspirational material out there that can be applied to animation (be it other art forms, or actual life), and your work will be more original and interesting for it. Same applies to music (if you only draw inspiration from your like-minded peers, you'll be limited by what has already been done in your field).

Prome 2010-11-18 15:03:08

lol @ can you see naked mermaids