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My tips and tricks of how I animate (THREAD)
I want to share some of my own tricks and tips I use when I do my animations. It can save time or makes certain things easier. here we go. I use Flash:
I want to share some of my own tricks and tips I use when I do my animations. It can save time or makes certain things easier. here we go. I use Flash:
1. I always choose GRAPHIC over Movie clip when things move (I use MC only when i need blur or to tint stuff) because Graphic allows you to see the animation inside it on timeline, MC does not. it also wont show on exported video.
2. I animate eyebrows, eyes and beak in graphic what loops inside. If I need it to sync to music, I have that in there too. The parts wont jump around, they stay still. I can always add more frames into it when needed.
3. Graphic allows me to move that specific part on timeline, while the animation inside Graphic moves. It makes me able to see exactly what next frame is, so I can change it on timeline.
You can also make this loop "break" by pasting other parts into it, or change. (The animation inside graphic doesnt break) You can reuse the parts to make cool new loops or faces, by just looking what frame comes next and pasting the frames around
Like here. I first inserted keyframe so the black dot comes. Otherwise it wont work. Then I pasted that exact part a bit further. Now it repeats the loop from that specific part
Like this
Or like this. I reused the eyes closed frame and changed it tiny bit. If you have bunch of blinks and beak shapes in the graphic, you can do different faces so much faster, as it is already animated. You just copy paste specific parts of frame to reloop.
4. I puppeteer sketches and "poorly animate" things so I can see how the timing is before I actually start to animate. I draw a sketch and keep pasting it around, stretching it around, when I need squash or stretch. It doesnt have to look pretty.
It's a helpful guide to be sure your character doesn't go too much out of model. Or if you want it to go, you can exaggerate the parts on top of the sketch. It saves time too and makes you able to see the timing and so on.
5. ALWAYS USE LAYERS. They are such a HUGE lifesaver AND time saver too,. You can reuse parts, draw between, remove parts without removing the WHOLE character. Example, leg fucked up, okooou. What now? Do I have to redraw whole character again? Nope! Just delete the fucked up leg
And redraw the leg. Example. This Devin head has 13 layers (Eyes, eye pupils, mouth upper part, mouth lower part, nostril 1, nostril 2nd, eyebrows, back of head, the beanie, 1 glasses glass, 2nd glasses glass, glasses part what holds it, between the glasses the ( thing.
6. I ALWAYS draw eyes first when I create character. It is the most expressive part. I animate all the blinks and so on and I can reuse the eyes everywhere, as the graphic has all the animation in it. Change it whenever I want different blink and so on. Pupils come 2nd.
I had a sketch under it what was synced with music. Then I followed sketch and draw all the eyes in 1 single graphic. When I had eyeballs done, then I copy pasted the pupils around and see what works. I apologise if it sounds lazy but I honestly was not bothered to redraw still
eyeballs every 2 frames when it was still. Same was with back of the head, as it is honestly super time consuming when example, file has 2000 frames and I redraw the same head piece 2000 times just so the lines "wobble a bit". So I puppeteered the back of the head. Sorry!
After eyes, I added mouth. 2nd super important part on my animations, as it gives so much expressions! Same thing. New layer and I just followed my sketch and drawn eyes to animate that :). Again, the head is MOSTLY still in graphic, it does not bounce around.
I make it bounce around on timeline outside graphic (You go into it and out of it) by looking the face and see where I drag it next. 3rd most important is eyebrows. I always sync it with eye blinks.
And then more new layers for every other object I want to animate. Example with the glasses, I did two different glass parts because I wanted one to be front of the nose and 2nd part behind the nose, so that's why they needed to be on different layers. Same with arms.
7. All my characters have every part different layer. Head, what is graphic, has layers. Body is seperate, wing 1, wing 2, tail, leg 1, leg 2, foot 1, foot 2. Hand palm 1, hand palm 2, the arm 1, arm 2. (The noodle part)You might be "holy shit??? SO MUCH?"
but it helps saving animation time! If you only draw leg for example, and fuck up, you don't delete whole chara. only leg :). And you can look how other parts move and you can draw your leg by following your other parts.
8. You can mirror leg in graphic and align it on timeline! 2nd leg here is just same as leg 1st, just flipped. As it moved in its own loop, I had to insert keyframe and change the specific frame as it got holes. But that's also very good time saver if the leg is mostly the same.
Here is example how two looped graphics (Body bounce and tail bounce) wont align near the end (has hole between tail and body). To fix it, I make "insert new keyframe" into the tail loop.
As the graphic is one long piece, I have to make a new keyframe so it seperates the big long piece. If I do not do that, then I move the whole piece in all frames. But I only want to move that 1 specific tail frame. But you need to "insert new keyframe" other frame too next to it
As then it moves that part on ALL the frames after it. You need to like seperate the long frame into "keyframes" After You do it, then you can change that specific tail without moving the tail off on every other frame. Then you can check how it moves untill new frame.
Another example. Tail was animating on its own (loop inside) and now another part with the hole. Again, seperating the frame by doing "insert new keyframe" So it is sandwitched between two keyframes
