Do character animation in ASP and finals in FLASH

[rajpatwardhan]

Its better to use Flash for finalising or mastering your movie because of excellent actionscript support. While in Flash its very difficult to make body movements and facial expressions as we get easily in ASP.

As per my view ASP animation is best over Flash because . . .

1. Total body movement can be done only with cell animation in
Flash as we get in ASP at ease.

2. Lip sink is easy in ASP.

3. At the time of direction if you want some extra movement or
expression, it will take DAYS to do in Flash. In ASP we can do it
in MINUTES.

4. Nodal work or line work is easy in ASP than Flash.

Process I adapt while making an animation movie in FLASH with character animation in Anime Studio Pro.

1. Backgrounds.

Backgrounds are made in Flash itself. Since I make final animation in Flash its better to make backgrounds in Flash to keep swf size in control.

2. Characters :

I prefer drawing character in ASP.

3. Character animation.

Animation in ASP and export as swf.

4. Importing in Flash.

a. In new file named Resources. Go on creating movie clips and
import swf file of character animation.

b. If you have 10 characters then you may take 10 Resource files
named by character.

c. You can do a trick of reverse animation in flash itself by copy-
pasting frames and rversing an animation.

d. If reverse animation is same, dont do it in ASP as it wil increase
your file size.

e. If you wanna slow down animation, just extend frames in Flash
than taking more frames in ASP.

5. Color Problem.

a. ASP colors are TV safe so they are dull than in Flash. So When
you have backgrounds made in Flash and Characters in ASP, you
may feel that characters are dull against background.

b. Make a file in Flash taking all color rectangles on 1 frame ( you
can take scene, face or anything for reference instead of
rectangle, you even can name colors. ). Export this frame as
.PNG and then import this PNG in color pallette of ASP. Now use
only these colors. This will solve the problem of color mismatch in
Flash.

6. Line width problem.

a. Concept of hairline in Flash is excellent. When we take line width
as hairline. It will not get thick even if you zoom or increase size
to any level. Unfortunately in ASP this is not so. So problem
occured when we take character from ASP to Flash. If you try to
zoom on face of character the outlines are really annoyingly thick.

b. If your flash file dimensions are 800 * 600 then take file
dimensions in ASP 1024*768 or you can take even bigger
depending on how much zooming you are going to do in Flash. (
default ASP width and height is very small). Now draw or animate
your characters this big.

c. Take outlines in ASP 0.25.

d. When you import this character in Flash, its size is really big. And
trick is when you reduce the size in Flash there is no thickening of
lines at all.

7. Problems when we take characters in Flash from ASP.

Sometimes we get BLANK shape. Suppose you have two legs or eyes filled with say, blask color, when you render and watch SWF, all is fine. But when you import in Flash you see that one leg or eye if filled with color and other is blank. Now here problem is not in ASP or Flash. This is the problem of working in ASP for Flash imports. Take following care to avoid such problems in flash.

a. Generally when drawing identical parts artist makes one part,
duplicate it and selecting both parts he creates objects. This is
the hitch. Never select multiple parts and create object, else one
of the parts will go blank in Flash. Always create object selecting
individual parts.

b. Same thing while applying styles.

c. Take minimum nodes while drawing.

d. Check that your nodes do not overlaps. This overlapping of
nodes is againg problematic when imported in Flash.

e. Do not hesitate to use maximum layers in ASP. More the layers,
ie. each part on different layers, lesser problems in Flash.

f. When character is drawn. Before making bone structure, move
parts away from eachother with long distance. After applying
bone structure and linking Offset the parts to desired position.
This will prevent attaching bones to wrong parts or overlapping.

g. Unlike Moho ASP enables you to apply bones and animate even if
you take folders; So different body parts like fase, hair, body,
dress can be kept in different folders. This will prevent confusion
and complications while animation.

h. When you draw parts on different layers. You can import them
easily as per layer. So body parts can be easily reused.

i. Never use any EFFECT except Gradient.

j. Use Camera in ASP while animating craracter only if required.

k. Never use camera while drwing character. For detail drwing use
ZOOM.

COMING UP NEXT TIPS > > > >

[animationkolhapur]

Hi Raj...

Those were really nice pointers from you .. keep on spilling over more ..

Regards,

Sagar

[patricia3d]

Should I purchase Flash also for finalising?
How much it will cost?

[jahnocli]

Should I purchase Flash also for finalising?
How much it will cost?

Depends what you want to do. It's not cheap, but if you want to produce Flash movies, it's probably a good idea -- although you don't HAVE TO, there are some things which Flash can do better (sound, for example), and some things which Flash can do and AS can't (eg., interactivity). But it's perfectly possible to produce Flash movies just using AS...