display works for comments and suggestions

[RUSHVision]

Sure, go ahead. Glad I could help.

[yesthisismyday]

full view



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[axcho]

This thread is intriguing.

Can you do bunnies fighting too?

[RUSHVision]

only that last 'full view' link is working...

Those are good, but if I can be honest...I think you've lost the essence of what was making your illustrations work. All of your pieces up to and including 'Little Baby's Adventure' have a simple and clean illustrative style to them. The images have a purity that perfectly compliment the story itself.

The ones after that though, took on an entirely different character. A character that is far more chaotic and a bit darker in nature. This is caused by an increased amount of detail as well as a slight shift in drawing style. As for adding detail, I would keep things as simple as possible, only adding lines when necessary to define the form or to give a hint of greater detail.

All of this also happened after I posted that image with the flying pirate heads, so I hope that didn't influence your style in any way. Nothing in that image should be construed as a serious suggestion, I was just having a little quick fun.

It was suggested that you try adding some shading. Perhaps this was also a factor contributing to the change in your style. I will agree that it might be nice to add a little shading, but I would suggest that you first, use simple colors, and second, that you put a little more thought into exactly what is getting highlighted and/or shaded. Your highlights and shadows should be used to define the form of three-dimensional objects in your illustration. Furthermore, in order to keep things 'pure', I would suggest that you do so sparingly.

For example, I think there should be a lot less variation in the planks on your ship. There is so much going on with the ship that the characters get lost. One thing that would improve this would be to maybe go ahead and use different colors for the planks, but use ones with less variation so the lights and darks aren't competing against one another so fiercely.

Another thing is that the lighting/shading isn't really consistent. This is particularly evident in the clouds on that bottom one. For one thing, I would lighten up the colors unless you are actually trying to convey a more stormy mood. Most important though, would be to work on the shading. See how you basically just have a bunch of different colored blobs? Those colors should actually be defining the shape of the clouds, instead they are just kind of mashed together incoherently. And again, keep things simple. I think you could get away with a lot less detail and still render a perfectly good cloud.

One thing in particular that you want to avoid with your chosen style is gradients. Instead of the gradient that you have going on that one black pirate hat, I would suggest using one other color to draw highlights that define the shape of the hat's brim, for instance.

Something else that I think will help lighten up the darker mood is if you were to remake the skull and crossbones symbol into one that is more cute and friendly to better compliment the innocent theme.

[yesthisismyday]

thanks RUSHvision,
I'm making a small clip using flash right now. Does anyone know how to combine different individual clips into one big file? I have 20 small pieces and I don't know how to put them together.
thank you in advance,
and btw, when I try to convert the clip into avi or wmv, the quality is really poor. DOes anyone know any other way to do the job, cuz I want to put the clip on youtube n' they dont support flash file.

[RUSHVision]

What version of Flash do you have and how long are each of the clips?

[goliard]

Does anyone know how to combine different individual clips into one big file?

Have you tried using scenes?

when I try to convert the clip into avi or wmv, the quality is really poor.

Have you tried altering the export settings?

[RUSHVision]

Ack...don't use scenes.

[yesthisismyday]

here is the link to some of my clips
http://www.vnjournal.com/yesthisismy...ittle_baby.htm
my knowledge of flash is limited, I dont know how to do the loading bar or to make long animation, so I decided to make small pieces. Now I dont know how to put them together. When I converted them into avi, and used window moview maker to put them together, the file was big and the quality was not really good. What should I do?

[SaphuA]

I don't know how I got here.. I thought I was browsing the games forum Interesting postings here. I'm still interested in ytimd's age, or atleast a range (<10;10-20;20-30;30-40;40>). I'm just realy curious, it might help understanding the things I've read here a bit more.

[RUSHVision]

I'm afraid that's going to remain a mystery, my friend.

[goliard]

...I decided to make small pieces.

Have you tried putting those small pieces into scenes?

[RUSHVision]

Wow, you've been busy. Those all look great.

I don't think scenes are going to help with this problem. ytimd wants to put these up on YouTube, hence the need for .avi or .wmv instead of .swf. That's one reason why I asked what version of Flash ytimd was using. I'm still working with MX, but later versions of Flash have better video support so ytimd might be able to export directly from Flash.

Size is still going to be an issue, though. Something like this is perfect for Flash, but simply the physical size of it is going to make for some pretty big files no matter what the content might be.

Are they all telling a continuous story? Are you trying to string all of those together into one movie? Could you break it up into several chapters or segments?

[yesthisismyday]

I dont know how to do it but I'll check as soon as I get home. Thank you!

[yesthisismyday]

Wow, you've been busy. Those all look great.

I don't think scenes are going to help with this problem. ytimd wants to put these up on YouTube, hence the need for .avi or .wmv instead of .swf. That's one reason why I asked what version of Flash ytimd was using. I'm still working with MX, but later versions of Flash have better video support so ytimd might be able to export directly from Flash.

Size is still going to be an issue, though. Something like this is perfect for Flash, but simply the physical size of it is going to make for some pretty big files no matter what the content might be.

Are they all telling a continuous story? Are you trying to string all of those together into one movie? Could you break it up into several chapters or segments?

I have no solid plan for them yet. I do want to put them together in one .swf file, then I'll try to find a way to convert it into .wmv
I'm using flash 8 btw

[RUSHVision]

Since it's so long I still think the best way to go is to break it up into several pieces. Even though YouTube has a 10min and 100mb limit on their videos, that doesn't mean that viewers are going to want to wait that long to watch them. I would recommend 5-10mb chunks at the very most. Determine where you can cut it up and add some chapter numbers. Then you can mix and match clips, putting several together to create one chapter.

From there you should be able to export directly from Flash. One thing I found out by checking the YouTube help section though, is that you need to use either .AVI, .MOV or .MPG. They recommend that you use DivX MPEG4. Flash should be able to use it, and if you don't have that codec already I would give it a google and download it.

I would also seriously consider resizing your video to 320x240. The size change alone will bring the file size down quite a bit. You should be able to take your clips, set the registration point to the upper left corner, and scale them down 58.2%. That will make your width 320 and your height 233. I know it's nice to have it bigger, but if you can't display them as vectors the file size is just going to be huge.

[yesthisismyday]

thank you RUSHVision. my comp crashed a few days ago. I'm getting a new one soon. I'll work on it as soon as I get my new toy.

[RUSHVision]

Cool. Have fun with your new computer.

[yesthisismyday]

replaced the hard drive

[RUSHVision]

LOL...are those for a new story or just for fun?