Trying to learn Flash, here's my ridiculous first test animation...

[m1khaela]

Here's my first random awful little attempt at animation. If I can figure out how to do this better and faster, I may do some animated political cartoons soonish. Click to view:

Comments

[scottbateman]

Pretty! Email me with any Flash questions you have and I'll endeavor to answer: scott at batemania dot com.

[m1khaela]

thanks Scott! I most likely will have questions, Masheka knows some Flash but he trained on a much earlier version than we have (we have 8). what version do you use?

[scottbateman]

Something much earlier than 8. FlashMX...? I'll be upgrading in the new year, I'm sure.

[m1khaela]

MX is right before 8. There is now CS3, which supposedly has fancy new features or something.

Here's a question--do you use painstaking lip-sync sound by sound (i.e. a different mouth shape for each sound) or do you fake lip-sync by having the mouths cycle through a bunch of different shapes and just close when a person isn't talking? Lip-sync seems like a hell of a lot of work...

[scottbateman]

For lip-sync, I cycle through three or four different mouth shapes, with every other one being a teeth-baring EEEE shape interspersed with Oh and Uh and sometimes Eww. I started doing it that way because I noticed in Preston Blair's classic animation book, approximately half of the alphabet sounds can be represented by something close to the teeth-baring EEEE shape.

I animate at 12 frames per second, and each mouth shape is 2 frames. And I simply make "Mouth Motion" a symbol in the library that lasts like 12 frames and loops. Then I can simply replace it on the timeline with a "Mouth Closed" symbol at the right keyframe.

And if someone holds a syllable longer than say, four frames, I replace the moving mouth with a still frame of the appropriate mouth shape.

Fun!