Animation Questions

[aaron.martone]

My apologies if this isn't the proper forum; I perused them all and nothing screamed "Animatior Club". So here goes.

What's the best way to create animated characters? (advanced ones, like making a Flash Cinematic)

Would you make seperate "cells", ie, how drawing animators do, and then just sequence them together? Or do you create "elements" of say, the body, and then add layers for movable areas, such as arms, head, eyes, mouth, etc.?

Can anyone recommend some good Flash Animation websites/tutorials? I'm really getting into the idea of making a game, and animation (aside from coding as well) will be a big part if I want to make it interactive and entertaining.

[gyrocf17]

thats what i do... add layers for movable elements ... and it all depends on how complex the animation is (how many moveable parts there are) you just separate the characters pivot-points... (where he bends)... tip: when you make letsay an arm for example- if you set the pivot spot in the graphic to be at the shoulder.. it'll make it easyer to rotate and move how you want when you are animating that part... (if u dont get it now u will when u start makin em)

hope that helped

[yeah-yeah]

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...?tw=multimedia

that should help you a bit.

[scribblert]

If you're doing animation for in-game graphics, the animation size needs to be as small and SIMPLE as possible, so I would say go with cells (head, arm, legs as symbols). For cinematic cuts, depending on how elaborate you want them to be, you can actually animate them traditionally, scan them in and clean them up in flash (but be aware that these will probably end up pretty large, so you might want to create them in external files that are loaded into a main swf).

Just make sure that the in-game animation is VERY simple, as you want the maximum processing rate to stay within grasp of the common computer.