Top 5 Tips for Flash Animation
by Mark Osberg
5. Consider how your character and animation can be broken up onto separate layers.
Flash lends itself perfectly to snappy and stylish limited animation, which is great for lazy animators such as myself. If for example I have a character waving (as in Fig. 1, below) and only the arm is moving then I'll move that arm onto it's own layer, which saves me having to redraw the rest of him over and over again. The Amount of layers for your character (Fig. 2) is limited only by how complex you want your animation to be.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Another thing to consider is how the design of your character can help make it easier for you to break it apart on separate layers. Remember those old Yogi Bear cartoons? I Always thought it odd that Yogi was a wild bear but he wore a collar and tie, then when I was studying animation I found out that his head was separate to his body and the collar was a clever way of hiding any cutoff lines. Those cartoons are over thirty years old but the same tricks can be applied with great effect in Flash
4. Keep your time line and library organized with every layer and object correctly labeled.
This can be tedious and you may be tempted not to do it but if say your working on a 300 frame animation with a hundred different layers and objects you will get very confused if you haven't labeled everything. (See Fig. 3 and 4.)
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
3. Surf the net. The Internet is the greatest resource tool ever invented. Ten years ago if I needed a reference picture of say a truck or the great wall of China, I'd have to get in my car and drive to the library, now all I have to do is type a word into google and I instantly get hundreds of different pictures to choose from. The other great thing about the net is there are heaps of talented animators and artists with daily blogs. From these blogs you can gain invaluable insight about how they work and where they get there inspiration from. Here's some links to some of my favourites
- http://www.coldhardflash.com/ {one of the best resources for flash animation}
- http://augenblickstudios.com/home/main.html
- http://ghostbot.blogspot.com/
- http://www.puffycrew.blogspot.com/
- http://www.houseofcool.blogspot.com/
- http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/ {This Blog is one of the best on the net and belongs to John K the creator of Ren and Stimpy}
- http://davepryor72.blogspot.com/
- http://wubby.typepad.com/
- http://stephensilver.blogspot.com/
2. Watch and study lots of cartoons. I know this sounds difficult But you need to spend many hours on the couch watching cartoons. If anyone says your wasting your life tell them that it's research and to go away and leave you alone. If your fortunate enough to have pay pay TV then you should watch Cartoon Network. One of the Best shows on this channel is called Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends , it has fantastic design and humor, plus it's animated entirely in Flash!
1. Learn the basic principles of animation.
Flash is only a tool, it will not make you a better animator. The best animators are the ones that understand basic principles such as line of action, weight, timing, squash and stretch etc. Books such as the Illusion Of Life and Richard William's The Animators Survival Kit can help you better understand these subjects. (Click the covers for more details.)
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Mark Osberg is freelance animator with seven years industry experience. You can contact him at mark.osberg@gmail.com