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Awesome thread. Here's an animation I made last year: Fencing practice And some favorites: Ryan - A 3D animated documentary about the animator Ryan Larkin. Sleeping betty - A bunch of creatures try to wake up sleeping betty. Limited animation but cool nonetheless and really nice character designs. Story from north america - A catchy song with weird animation.
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2009 02:26 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:53 |
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It reminds me a lot of the Wario ware Inc games, without the NWS stuff.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2009 01:01 |
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The art can be done in photoshop with the pencil tool, and I guess you could export it to.... flash or after effects?
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2009 08:18 |
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BrokenCycle posted:Yeah most of the animation looks incredibly Flash friendly. The only thing is that flash isn't so good at handling pictures. Or at least it wasn't a few years ago.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2009 13:09 |
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TONY DANZAS HO posted:my big problem is how the hell do I get it onto the computer like that? I guess you could also achieve the same thing by scanning pictures and saving them all in a folder with sequential names and then loading them as a video composed of a string of images in adobe after effects or premiere. quote:To me, that video I posted looks like they took a bunch of PICTURES of the drawings and then stitched it together in... something. That can't be right, maybe they scanned them all and the "smudginess" (especially in the first bit) are a result of handling the paper or something. quote:This is what I have access to: I think some light tables can be bought online for pretty cheap or I even recall seeing some tutorials on how to build one yourself. quote:So, can I make a thing like the video I posted using the things I have available to me, without ending up with that "flash look"? Cause I don't want it to look like a flash thing. quote:Basically what I'm looking for is step-by-step instructions as if you were speaking to a child, like "scan pictures, put them in a folder, open this program, put them in there in this manner, tell it to do this thing, press this button, <computer magic here>, and then you have a video" but it is probably not that simple at all. -Scan images with sequential numbers into one folder. -Start after effects -Composition> New composition -File> import> image 01 > Load as a string (or something like that when it prompts a window) -Drag the image sequence into the timeline -File > Export > Choose whatever file type you want Another thing I recommend is that you read "The animator's survival kit" and/or "the illusion of life", although I think the former is better if you only care about the technical aspects. At the very least you should read this wikipedia article on the 12 principles of animation as using them makes any animation WAY better. Chernabog fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Nov 27, 2009 |
# ¿ Nov 27, 2009 13:28 |
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Yeah, no problem. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.
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# ¿ Nov 29, 2009 11:52 |
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Does anybody have any experience with blending animations for games? If so, is there any advice you could give?
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2009 11:23 |
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Today I watched The secret of Kells and it was a pretty cool movie. It just had great art all around. Sadly it will probably still take a long time for it to get to the US.
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# ¿ Dec 19, 2009 08:25 |
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It does, you just have to turn them into graphic symbols and change the drop down box on the properties screen to loop (or play X times).
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# ¿ Jan 18, 2010 22:46 |
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Speaking of flash, I am exporting an animated intro title card for my demo reel from flash into premiere as a .swf file but it looks blurry as hell. I'm not sure if the compression problem is from exporting it into premiere or from exporting from premiere to a quicktime (H264 codec). Is there any way to fix this? Are there any better codecs that will make the text more readable?
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# ¿ Feb 12, 2010 03:06 |
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Vaporware posted:check the scaling to make sure it's not scaled, check to make sure the text is positioned at whole pixels. I've found that masked text is a total bitch to make sharp, so avoid that if possible. I have masked text but it looks the same as the non masked. Also, I found out that changing the color from red to white made it less fuzzy, but still not good enough.
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# ¿ Feb 12, 2010 04:54 |
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The first one looks pretty good. The only thing is that the knee on the guy of the left seems to be twisting back without any reason. On the second one I'm not sure whats going on with those cubes. My best guess is that the guy is summoning and using them to fight or something, so if thats the case I would try to make it look like the cubes actually reflect the movement of his hands, kinda like you did at the very end where he lifts them. When he gets up after the leg swipe it looks a little robotic. I think it is because he is getting up at the same time as he is moving the leg under him, which in real life would make it imbalanced. And last, but not least, when he throws the cubes I think you can exaggerate the anticipation and ending poses a lot more. Make him really show the force of his movements. Maybe you can even combine the get up from the swipe with the throw anticipation for one big, fluid motion.
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# ¿ Feb 12, 2010 12:08 |
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Vaporware posted:Try changing the anti-alias option from "anti-aliased for readability" to "bitmap text" This is what I'm doing: First I put everything together on premiere and render it there. At this point it still looks good. Then I am taking it into after effects where I am adding some some effects and then rendering the final movie, and that's where it stops looking good.
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# ¿ Feb 12, 2010 23:33 |
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It wasn't letting me do that for some reason, but I imported the whole premiere project into AE and rendered it there. It took a lot longer to render but it looks good now. I'm guessing the problem was the double compression.
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# ¿ Feb 14, 2010 04:53 |
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Ok, so now that I got it exported, here's my reel. Any advice? http://vimeo.com/9439365
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# ¿ Feb 14, 2010 21:15 |
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Is the sound inside a movie clip? I don't even know if that's possible, but that's the only thing I can think of.
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# ¿ Apr 20, 2010 18:45 |
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That brings a lot of memories from my sophomore year. We had to do the exact same process with the difference that instead of painting in PS we imported everything into Toon Boom, transformed the lines to vectors, colored and composed it in there.Pibborando San posted:This is great. Thanks for taking the time to outline the whole process. The roughs are more about the general shape and timing of everything. Once you get that settled you can refine it further and do a batch of inbetweens if your keys are very spread apart that details don't have a chance to overlap if your drawings are too rough. Once you get that you have to clean up the keys so you can get the more precise inbetweens. For the line quality you want the lines to be perfectly smooth and opaque. Especially wherever lines connect. Maybe my teacher was being a perfectionist but he also asked for line thickness variation. For the clean ups you can either put a new paper on top or draw over colored pencil. You just have to be careful not to draw too hard with colored pencil because it can still show through even after photoshop.
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# ¿ Aug 24, 2010 05:30 |
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It really depends on each case. For example, if you have a character running, his motions are fast and broad and will take less frames. So you can inbetween more without cleaning up because the general placement of the body is the important part. Maybe even do all of it before cleaning up. If you have a character idling over a large number of frames his movement is going to be slow and small, so you pretty much need to clean it up first to be accurate in the subtle line variations. Edit: It is also a good idea to clean up the keys early to make sure that your character stays on model. Chernabog fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Aug 24, 2010 |
# ¿ Aug 24, 2010 07:32 |
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I do Flash animation for games and I like it. Many times I don't even use symbols, just because you can't do anything in perspective. Besides, commercials and children's TV aren't all that terrible, theres some good stuff out there.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2011 22:39 |
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HYMEN.SYS posted:Do you have CS2 (I think) or later? Because all the functionality of ImageReady is built into photoshop now. Just hit Window -> Animation and it'll bring up a timeline to gently caress with. I don't know if it supports onion skinning in any non-cumbersome way though. I don't know this either, but at worst you can alpha the layers. I guess that is cumbersome.
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# ¿ Jun 15, 2011 16:19 |
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HYMEN.SYS posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a44_gXQZmxg -Like neonnoodle said, don't be afraid to use squash and stretch. When the ball is going faster it should stretch and when it hits the ground it should squash. -make sure the animation archs are smooth, right now they look a little wonky. You could make a guide to help you out. -You can ease out when it is going up because gravity is decelerating the ball and ease in when it is is coming down because it starts accelerating.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 16:32 |
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Animation supplies are ridiculously expensive, an animation paper puncher can cost you hundreds of dollars.
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# ¿ Jun 29, 2011 02:16 |
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neonnoodle posted:There is no good reason to use Acme pegs now. Use 3-hole pegs. Yeah, I guess this is true, but the extra toughness of the long peg is nice.
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# ¿ Jun 29, 2011 05:54 |
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QUEEN CAUCUS posted:The talk of lip-syncing inspired me, so I decided to do one myself! Here is a quickie clip from my most favorite movie in the world, The Room. I'm, going to nitpick this just because this sort of stuff is what I do at work every day (flash walks, not nitpicking.) -First of all, I really like the eyes and the secondary motion on the face. It is a pretty good job overall, and even more so if this is the first time you do something like this. -The legs are popping and twitching a bit. Did you use bones? -The tail looks like it isn't connected to the body because it is slightly delayed. It should have more of a whip-like action where the body movement drives it. -The arm has a weird slow down and speed up when going forward up. At the apex of the swing it should be at its slowest and then start moving backwards immediately, sort of like a pendulum. -I think you can push the down position a bit more to give it more weight and impact.
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# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 07:57 |
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It really depends on the company. But make a few more walks/runs, animate some characters doing actions, like maybe attacking or something. If you can animate special effects or short cut-scenes it would expand your opportunities. Keep everything under a minute and a half.
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# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 16:36 |
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I think quicktime will work, or you can switch them to graphics like butterfly suggested, you might just need to synchronize them to the timeline.
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# ¿ Sep 11, 2011 08:50 |
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Did you flip the symbols at any point? Or do you have any guides that might be messing them up?
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2011 22:34 |
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You should start learning to draw real life before you move to cartoons. "Drawing on the right side of the brain" is good if you are a beginner. I haven't read them, but I have heard that the Andrew Loomis books are pretty good too. The best advice though, is to just go out and draw from life. A lot.
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# ¿ Oct 1, 2011 10:41 |
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The one thing I would warn you about an animation course is that if it is purely technical and doesn't teach any of the basics I would avoid it (as in they only teach the software). No amount of 3DS Max knowledge is going to help you if you don't know what is timing or how to make a good composition.
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# ¿ Oct 7, 2011 02:21 |
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It depends a lot on the art style, character designs and perspective. Sometimes you can get away with making a lot of symbols and animating it like a paper doll and other times you need to hand draw it frame by frame. Usually I end up with a combination of movie clips and hand drawn animation. Every once in a while I use bones but they are very buggy and look terrible most of the times. In some cases they can look fine and save lots of time. I usually separate each animation of a character into a single movie clip each so it can be swapped in-game for whatever is needed.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2011 22:29 |
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I had the same problem, and from the research I made, when you export a quicktime the computer is actually playing the movie and "print screen-ing" every frame, so if it slows down at any point it transfers to the quicktime. I don't know if exporting on a faster computer would solve the problem, but you might want to try exporting a PNG sequence and then putting it together in Premiere or something else. However, that brings up the problem that Movie clips won't work so you have to convert them all to graphics beforehand which can be a pain in the rear end. A third option is to export a .swf, import it to Premiere and then export it from there into a quicktime. The Flash export tools are terrible, by far the worst part of the software.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2011 10:10 |
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http://youtu.be/Q6RNg98LHdg Edit 2: http://youtu.be/FC8JyYZWCHA Chernabog fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Jan 4, 2012 |
# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 19:38 |
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Thanks, that is all great advice (That I actually agree with, because I don't always do). I'll go back to fix those things. Except for the nose, it was a stylistic choice I made and some people have commented on it but at this point it's probably too late to do anything about it.
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 20:34 |
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Uncle Jenkins posted:I haven't done a 4-legged run since 2nd year of college (5 years ago), but I took a crack at it for a project I'm working on. It's sorta based on the monster from "The Host." Would like critiques before I clean it up. I like the wave-like motion and I think it works overall. The only things I see are: -The tip of the tail is moving a little weird, like it's not really moving as a continuation of the butt. -The head is really big but it doesn't have much impact when the front legs land on the floor. I think it should have a more violent movement when it goes down. Not necessarily more extreme, just faster. -Add some secondary motion on the jaw so the head doesn't look so stiff -Same thing with that little arm or whatever it is in the middle.
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2012 20:53 |
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I had to make so many bouncing balls during college that I ended up hating them. At least 8 of them.
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# ¿ Feb 25, 2012 22:53 |
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I think because you are working in a very cartoony style you can get away with squashing and stretching the cannon. I had to animate a cannon once and I had exactly the same problem, the only difference was that my cannon was semi-realistic so I had to design it to be a retractable, so that I could squash and stretch it without actually "rubberizing" the shapes.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 10:25 |
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ArfJason posted:I'm just starting again with Flash and I am pretty much the novicest of novices, but I do enjoy doing this (most of the time anyways). Usually you have some reference of every angle of a character so that you can get the proportions right. In some instances you can copy shapes and paste them if they don't change much, that will make them stay the same. Usually, as long as your key poses and major breakdowns are correct, your in-betweens should retain the correct proportions. As far as the line quality goes, there aren't many options. Either you use the line tool to make everything look pristine, or if you are using the paint tool, you painstakingly fix every line so that it looks good. (Or leave it rough) There is no shortcut for this and it is the same as in traditional 2D, where an animator can spend hours on a single drawing.
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2012 10:34 |
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That's neat dude.
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# ¿ Jun 7, 2012 07:08 |
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What extensions do you guys use in Flash? Right now I only have one that renames all selected symbol instances with one click.
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# ¿ Jul 26, 2012 16:07 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:53 |
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Aleque posted:I use a few from http://www.toonmonkey.com/extensions.html Awesome, thanks. And "Enter current frame" is no longer necessary with CS6. I wish I had known about it before though. I'm definitely going to try some of these.
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# ¿ Jul 27, 2012 16:43 |