Questions about animating full cartoons?

[evilfrenchguy]

Hi everyone. I was hoping one of you fine flash pros could explain to me a little about how flash cartoons efficiently.

1. How exactly would you change viewer perspectives? ie Two characters are having a conversation; the view would be zoomed on whichever character is currently speaking. Is that what Scenes are used for? Should a well-organized cartoon use a lot of scenes with little bits of the cartoon in each scene?

2. When dealing with human art figures, is it best to concentrate on motion tweens for expressions and actions, or FBF?

3. Should most animation go on the root timeline? What's the best way to put it together?

4. What types of things need to be animated separately in its own movie clip as opposed to putting all the animation on one timeline?


Sorry, I know that's a lot...It's just that I have a fantastic idea for a cartoon series, but I've never animated anything that exceeds one scene. I'm just want to know what needs to go where in order to put together an episode efficiently. I can animate alright. I'm just confused as how to do properly. Thanks so much for taking time to help me, I appreciate it.

[evilfrenchguy]

Anyone?

[Dyon]

Please stay away from scenes, they will do you no good.
When making a cartoon, you can just use one scene, no problem

okay, the camera/viewer perspectives question.
An easy way to zoom in and out and such, is by putting everything in one big movie clip, which you can then just move around, zoom in and out with on the stage, as simple as tweening it.

If you make an animation you'd like to use multible times, thats the type of thing to make a separate movie clip of.

How you want to animate, tween or fbf, is up to you.

You might want to take a look at www.newgrounds.com for examples of flash cartoons and styles for making them.

Hope that helps.

[evilfrenchguy]

Yeah that helps a little. So I should make each part of my animation a separate movie clip, like Intro = mcScene1, Conversation = mcScene2, and just switch movie clips on the main timeline when I need to? That makes sense. Oh, and thanks for the link to Newgrounds. I've been "researching" for about a day now. Might I ask why Scenes are not recommended?

Thanks for the response BTW.

[Dyon]

Here´s a quick example file showing tweened animation and switching out mc's.

The character walks to the right, jumps, turns around and go's back to his starting position.

There are 2 movieclips, one of the character walking and one of him jumping.
I move the walking character to the right, then switch him for the jumping one.
The main time line needs to be to long enough to fit the animations in.

And to make a camera effect, you'd put the now main time line animation, into a movie clip as well, which you can then move around as the then main time line.

And why not to use scenes, well, that might just be my opinion, but scenes and actionscript can get very annoying, pointing to a scene, and labeled frames, bah, besides, you can make scenes on the main time line just fine.

[evilfrenchguy]

Yeah that's kinda what I was thinking...Except would it still work OK if I put what's currently on your main timeline into a MC called mcMoveJump, then just have the new MC on the main timeline? Like mcMoveJump would contain him walking and jumping, exactly like you have, except the only thing the main timeline would have to do, instead of doing any animating, is just wait 'til the MC containing your small animation is finished playing. I have no idea if I am making any sense, but you get what I'm saying?

[Dyon]

If you want to put the tweens that are now in the main time line into a movieclip you just have to copy the frames from the time line, select them all, right click, copy, then create a new object, make it a movieclip, and paste the frames into that time line.

Now you do have to make the main time line as long as the animations it holds.
If the movie clip takes 100 frames, the main time line has to also be at least 100 frames.

The good thing about making the character walking and jumping as seperate movie clips, is that on the main time line you can keep switching them in and out and reuse the same movie clip.

These are things you just have to try a few times, to find out what works best for what you want to make.

Hope that awnsers your question.

[evilfrenchguy]

Indeed it does. Thanks a lot!

[Dyon]

No problem, and good luck with your project.