draw line animation

[123esites]

I have been requested to do a simple line trace animation of a simple line drawing of a tv set. I have to make the flash animation look like the TV set is being drawn. How do I do this? I have tried using the pen tool and key framing advancing line shapes of the TV shape but I cannot tween these lines as an animation.

Any suggestions

Thanks

Kevin

[CDP-Design]

man there seems to be alot of people taking on projects they have no idea how to do at the moment LOL. Anyways to do this i suggest you use a motion guide to make the line get drawn so that the line follows the motion guides they are set to.

[123esites]

Thanks, I will have to try that. I did one similar to the signature flash movie posted on this site, it seems to work well for this.

Thanks for your suggestion

[argonauta]

you can reach a similar effect, maybe if you do it right, will be easier and more impressive by doing this:

Draw the TV, its outline i guess.

Then use a mask that little by little grows until it covers the entire tv. The end effect will look as if the tv is being drawn.

It's faster than animating lines, as only animate one object (tha mask, wich can be a rectangle changing its size) while if you animate line by line, it'll take you longer, and if you want to change something, probably you'll have to redo the entire animation.

[123esites]

Hi
Thanks for the suggestion about masks. I may try to figure out a way to make masks work because like you say they may want to change the drawing or even color and I would have to start over if I do it frame by frame.

The only problem with a mask is that I have to make it look like I am drawing the TV from one point going counter clockwise and there are several closed paths of lines. The outline of the TV the TV screen, the nobs of the TV and the antennas etc. Its a simple outline but a rectangle mask does not reveal one line at a time it will reveal an entire area beneath it.

I appreciate your response

[CNO]

Try using multiple layer/mask pairs to animate each sequence sequentially.

[argonauta]

check this one out. It was done qickly (i had the outline and coloring already, though).

[nayades]

pretty cool argo

the last resource 123 is to animate frame by frame. if done corectly is the most accurate animation... but also the most tedious

[123esites]

Hi everyone,
Thanks for your help. I chose the masked line segments, each line is masked on a seperate layer and it seemed to work fine. The client is happy so far.

see initial line drawing comp http://www.123esites.com/jbtmedia/tv.html

I appreciate everyones suggestion.

Thanks

Kevin