PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! helpme!

[Thatmainchick]

ok I am am new at the whole flash animation thing but I have to do this. I need to learn this program so I can start looking for work and and honestly it seems like a fruitless headache. so can any one suggest tutorials and look at this bad animation and offer feed back PLEASE!

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/51603381/

[athena]

hey thatmainchick, welcome to Keyframe. :)

One thing to keep in mind when you're hunting for more info is that the thing that separates a person who simply knows how to use Flash and someone who is sought after for employment in animation, is simply their ability to animate. Thus, I wouldn't be looking for Flash animation tutorials--I suspect you already know enough about Flash even right now--I'd be looking for straight-on animation tutorials... anything that's going to teach you the so-called "old school" principles of animation.

Hunt down books like ...
>> The Illusion of Life (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786860707/keyfratheanim-20) -- still considered the 'bible' of animation no matter what your medium
>> The Animator's Survival Guide (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571202284/keyfratheanim-20)


As for your specific example... you've got a good pose and some suggestion of weight shift, but it's a very straight ahead sort of action... put more of an ease-in and ease-out on the hip shift to take some of the 'pop' and jerkiness out of the animation. Also think about looking for places to overlap the action so that it's not a 1-2-3 kind of manuever... right now it's 1) place hand on hip, 2) pause, and 3) shift... break it up somehow... place hand on hip, roll shoulder part-way through the pause and begin to shift before the shoulder roll is done... do the move yourself in a mirror and see what comes naturally... watch every part of your body--not just the arm and the hip.

I know, it's Flash and that kind of flexibility is hard, but if your aim is employability then you've got to prove you're a character animator first and a Flash user second.


hope that helps. :D

[athena]

Hmm... just looking at it again, are you keying every frame or are you allowing Flash to do the transitions? I'm just wondering that might account for some of the wobble I'm seeing.