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James Hutchinson is one of the amazing speakers we have lined up for the Flash Kit Singapore 2001 conference. A world leading Flash cartoonist, he will be speaking about how to generate not only laughs, but also characterization in this short-form entertainment medium. Don't miss this unique opportunity to learn some great tips and techniques from James.

We are giving you the chance to post any questions that you may have about this session, or anything else you might want a God of Flash to answer for you. James will be checking the site regularly to post replies to questions, so if you have any questions at all for him, just post them here!

Check out his profile at: http://www.flashkit.com/fk01/singapo...tchinson.shtml

Hit me with your best shot.

I've got one James.

Preschool ProtoCops rocks!!
http://www.preschoolprotocops.com

How long did it take you?

It took me and another animator 10 weeks to make, start to finish. Half that was the creation of scripts, shotlists and storyboards. Not to mention all the art that had to be created on paper.

Probably about 5 weeks intensive Flash work.

When are you going to do us a kick-arse intro like the UltraShock ones you have done? :) How long did those ones take to put together?

Quote:

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I've got one James.

Preschool ProtoCops rocks!!
http://www.preschoolprotocops.com

How long did it take you?

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that was pretty cool james... 10 weeks is not bad... with just 2 animators? i must be bowing down for u james.. hehehe well hope we could see more projects from u.. if u need help like someone who will get u some drinks, pizza(?) and some chocolates for sleepless nights... just get me back.. :D hahahahaha JK!

cheers!

I have built several flash animations and they are great, but one: http://www.worldwidewebster.tv looks great sometimes and then all of a sudden the audio and the animation are not syncing?! I know that if there is too much info going on at the same time that could effect it. I have seen other animations that seem to be as complicated but seem so smooooooth. Am I missing something in the development stages?

Second animation: http://www.woastudio.com/flashindex.html looks crunchy because there are too many things going on right? What frame rate do you think is the best for the web?

I love http://www.2advanced.com stuff. They always look so fluid. I need to achieve this fluidity. Do you have a couple tips that I may need to take the last step into the holy sh*#! that was a killer animation category?

Thank you so much!
Adam R. Taylor
http://www.woastudio.com

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Originally posted by jezza
When are you going to do us a kick-arse intro like the UltraShock ones you have done? :) How long did those ones take to put together?

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Ooooh that's tough question. Don't ask that!

As for how long they took, well the third one was the most work, but we raced through that in about 4 weeks. It fell together really easily. The first one took a good three weeks to do aswell, with all those characters to draw... and the text effect, which I did by hand. Yikes!

No worries :)

Anothing thing, have you got a list of examples of your work there, just some url's to check out. I looked at timehead but at the moment there's only a mailto.

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Originally posted by woa
I have built several flash animations and they are great, but one: http://www.worldwidewebster.tv looks great sometimes and then all of a sudden the audio and the animation are not syncing?! I know that if there is too much info going on at the same time that could effect it. I have seen other animations that seem to be as complicated but seem so smooooooth. Am I missing something in the development stages?

Second animation: http://www.woastudio.com/flashindex.html looks crunchy because there are too many things going on right? What frame rate do you think is the best for the web?

I love http://www.2advanced.com stuff. They always look so fluid. I need to achieve this fluidity. Do you have a couple tips that I may need to take the last step into the holy sh*#! that was a killer animation category?

Thank you so much!
Adam R. Taylor
http://www.woastudio.com

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I checked out World Wide Webster, there is indeed a lot going on which could cause the show to lag on slower machines. I'm guessing you've got your sound as one big wav file and you're setting it to "Stream", right? That should in theory keep the sound and animation in sync, but I think there's a bug in Flash 4 and 5 that makes the sound slip behind a bit. One way to fix it is to put "stop" and then "play" in a keyframe half way through the cartoon. This lets the player catch up with itself.

What I do, however, is break all the sounds up into individual phrases and sound effects. I usually make the dialogue "Stream" and the sound effects "Event". I still need to put the "stop" and "play" command in every now and then though, but at least the sound is always in sync.

(Also, I think you should try to limit the amount of bitmaps you use. You could probably cut half the filesize if you used vectors instead.)

I couldn't view http://www.woastudio.com/flashindex.html - kept timing out on me. But generally I use 20fps, although ProtoCops was at 24fps.

One tip I have for fluid animation is to have only one thing happen at a time, but quickly followed up by something else. This is instead of having ten things animating at once. That way you can have great animation and you also get a rhythm to your work. At least, that's the idea.... Also keep an eye on how much the screen is having to redraw. If you've got a big illustration with hundreds of vector points filling the screen, it's obviously going to run slower than a smaller optimized illustration with less points.

Hope that helps. :)

Hi James,

By complete coincidence I checked the flashkit mailout and found speaker section, saw your profile and noticed that you mentioned bringing 3D to Matinee.co.uk.

I've just started with them as a Senior Multimedia designer and wanted to get your thoughts on the future for 3D in the online enviroment, also noticed that you are originally from Berkshire, I'm local to the area to. Anyway...3D any thoughts?

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Originally posted by nicki
Hi James,

By complete coincidence I checked the flashkit mailout and found speaker section, saw your profile and noticed that you mentioned bringing 3D to Matinee.co.uk.

I've just started with them as a Senior Multimedia designer and wanted to get your thoughts on the future for 3D in the online enviroment, also noticed that you are originally from Berkshire, I'm local to the area to. Anyway...3D any thoughts?

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It's a small world, huh? Say hi to Kev and Dale for me.

3D in flash will continue to evolve, but it's so much easier to create than before, and therefore more common. It's not really such a unique thing for a site. I still like it on a personal level though, and there's a ton of avenues no one has explored with 3D in flash.

It just depends on what you're trying to achieve, really.

Awright, my turn...

James, I've seen most every one of the samples of your animation work mentioned here and they all are nothing short of astounding, man everything is in such a perfect balance... anyways, this comes from a frustrated aspiring character animator who never had money to pay expensive college (classical animation) tuitions and ended up doing corporate "interactive" crap on the web instead (I earned a BFA degree though). I still keep the desire to be able to produce animated Flash shorts someday, but when faced with the time constraints imposed by "serious" corporarte work, suddenly doing a 10-week nonstop marathon to produce a cartoon short is something way beyond you can afford in terms of time, yet I know that's the way it is buddy.

No need to enter into details, but did you receive some sort of funding or sponsorship to create Preschool Protocops, or to get Timehead up and producing all this great stuff without financial worries? (You know what I mean here) because well, if I could get someone to pay me to produce Flash cartoon shorts, dammit I'd quit my present job in a New York minute! Or, what advice would you give to aspiring Flash animators to have both fun and a profit with their work?

Is Timehead expanding on search of new talent? *grin*

thanks in advance!
[Edited by Beto on 11-24-2001 at 06:18 PM]