I watch a lot of stuff here, and I've made my share I keep hearing the same complaints over and over again, although I see folks here like Blue, and Grega pressing the limits. And the folks making the complaints are new folks with very small portfolios if any. I'd like to hear from folks that have really pushed it to it's limits, what's really wrong with it.
Recently I see I lot threads started for frame to frame animation, if it's going to be presented on the web, and you have a character standing still for twenty frames why is that better than making clips? Have you ever thought of that.
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Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Phacker, from my experience, I think a lot of animators out there, especially those with a traditional background, have a strong bias against computer assisted animation, whether it be Flash or 3D. A lot of 2D guys HATE 3D because it took their jobs away, and I"ll admit that I too swore I would never learn it. Once I ate my words and tried it, I found it to be just as creative as animating in 2D.
Flash's reputation has taken a hit since it emerged and has been looked down upon by animator's ever since. I strongly believe that if people would just give it a chance they would see they can do twice as much in less time as well.
My only complaints are more with the current version of the Flash player, which if you put lots of gradients and animated clips in at once, it chugs and plays the animation slower than you animated it.
Flash Character Packs, Video Tutorials and more: www.CartoonSolutions.com
I know I've made the impression that I'm a Flash hater and a Moho salesman but that's not the case. In my opinion there's nothing really WRONG with it, in fact, I've seen a lot of good stuff done in it, it's just not my choice of software to use. I mean, I wouldn't spend $700 to get Flash when I could get Moho, which in my opinion is easier to use (yes I have tried Flash), for $99.
Spooze!
Price is one of the factors that made Flash great, I don't think I've ever paid over 150.00 for an upgrade, but then I didn't go with this last option (MX 2004)and all the built in crap. I use an old version of Dreamweaver that I bought when it was cheap, and Freehand and Fireworks I've never had much use for. Plus, the Coldfusion and other developer tools, knew I'd never make any money off them. That's maybe why this last edition lost money.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
There are no problems (towards animating imo), per-se, with Flash. As with any progressing technology there are limitations. What you note, P, is that in the hands of open-minded experienced artists those limitations are pushed or can dictate an inventive style.
I think Flash does have limitations...but anything can be done in Flash if one really wants to. The limitations now are one of question of feasability. If one wants to spend their personal time cleaning up full animation and inbetweening on the computer, it has been done (this guy did)http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/211982. But for speed and economy in a commercial sense it can never be a quicker realization than using the symbol animation effectively.
But even in the analog /organic world, from the results I see on some drawn TV animation, many still don't kow how to embrace the limitations (of time and budget in their case) believing stuff has to be constantly moving all the time. The result is over-animated, over-directed, over- produced(executive weight).........over there ;)
But I digress...
What's wrong...?
Their terminology use of Ease-in ease-out is opposite to traditonal for one. But I'm over it.
If Flash hadn't happenned would ToonBoom or Moho even be around?
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Any animation is going to require clean up and producers should be aware of the limits of their medium. Look at SouthPark it was done in limited animation but it caught the publics notice. Sure I've heard complaints about their style, but they did become popular, and you have to admit their stories are what carried the day. I still say story is the most important element. Software is important, but only to the extent that it limits your storytelling capabilities.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Oh absolutely, some of my favorite animations have sub par animation, but the storytelling is so intuitive that you're still able to thoroughly enjoy it.
I'm with you Graphiteman! That still bugs me. I've mentioned it befor that I have to keep a post-it on my monitor with an animation chart that says "ease-in... ease-out Flash"
I think, and this is my opinion as it applies to broadcast animation, Flash is fine the way it is. There are only three things I'd change. One being reversing the "ease-in/ease-out" names. Two change the "undo" back to how it was in the last version. And three, to widen the frame count window in the properties box so you can see three to four numbers at a time instead of just two. Other than that, I think it's fine. I don't use it for web stuff or action scripting, but I'm sure there are a few problems there.
I think Flash is one of the more versitile programs out there. Maybe I think it is because I've been using it for 6 years. Like Evan from Jib Jab said at a Producer's Guild meeting a few weeks back, you CAN aniamate the whole ballroom sequence from Beauty and the Beast in Flash...but why would you want to?
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
I always wondered why someone didn't conduct an experiment and re-do part of an old, say, Flintstones episode in FLASH and then show both the FLASH version and the original.
Done properly, they should be almost indistinquishable.
I've realized that limited animation, like those older 60's H&B cartoons would b a perfect vehicle for FLASH.
Those cartoons and their styles are still so appealing, its a wonder why no-one has tried to duplicate them.
Most of the timing I've seen in Flash cartoons tends to be too zippy and bouncy. My feeling is that a bit more conservative thinking in the timing and the "FLASH-ness" of the animation would all but disappear. The software should not be the showcase, the animation and the results from the animation should be.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
I dunno about Toonboom but Moho is based more on a 3D animation format so it probably would've come along ;)
Once again I'm not trying to bash Flash or make it look bad but I just like Moho's format better :)
Spoooze!
Is he famous or something? Evan from Jib Jab comes in the Coffee House I work at everyday so I always joke around with him about stuff. I just know JibJab from that popular Kerry/Bush ad.
Yeah, Evan and his brother Greg are pretty well know in the Flash community, but most people just know their work from the Jib Jab cartoons.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Flash has plenty of things wrong with it, but it still does a good job, you just have to treat it mean.
At the end of the day if you have a strong idea and the story is tight then it shouldn't matter how you make the thing.
The Brothers McLeod
[SIZE=2]brothersmcleod.co.uk[/SIZE]
when i was an assistant animation supervisor, one of my jobs
was spotting corner-cutting cheats by in-betweeners who are
anxious to reach their quota (they were paid per sheet)
one of their favorite cheats is the turnaround.
the middle breakdown looks good, but the drawings on either side
(ease-in and outs) were traced, not derived.
nowadays, it's called flash animation.
it's ok. breakdown drools, cushion rules. story is king.
and without flash, animation, as a creative expression,
would still belong to the privileged few.
Don't worry. All shall be well.
My main complaints with Flash revolve around bugs that never seem to get squashed. For example, the vertical scroller on the timeline wigs out sometimes and I have to restart to get it back. There's also some inconsistency with tweening different symbols on the same layer - sometimes you can bounce back and forth, sometimes you can't. Frustrating.
Add me to the ease terminology group - plus it'd be nice if there was an f-curve for the ease rather than an arbitrary value. A -100 ease is very different in a 3-frame tween than it is in a 10-frame tween.
You should really have one symbol per layer if you are going to tween them. Flash isn't smart enough to handle multiple symbols on a layer and then tween them.
f-curve...blah. I just tween it, then keyframe the tween and then tweek from there. Thats really the only way to have things move on arcs and to have hands drag and such. I'm pretty much doing the same in Maya adding more keyframes to the curves to have more control over my animation.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Ahhh Ape...
I gotta say I have grown to really like and respect Flash as I embraced it. Being a traditional 2D animator, I really like being able to cleanup, color and see realtime what I have done. However, I agree with others on a few things, like:
Flash would have me at hello if there were some sort of arc editor for tweening and ease in/outs. Although I usually go thru the same process you mentioned above to make the animation less "Flashy". And I agree with cushioning, it gives the animation so much life and even subtelty.
Yes! give us 4 digit frame count boxes in the properties box! That tiny little input box kills me.
Better shape tweeing capabilities. Sometimes the entire alphabet of shape hints fails me.
And what is it with the eraser? If I'm deep inside clips, it becomes all I can do to erase a line or fill to cleanup.
Brushes! I recently mimicked pencil line-like brushes for a character to give it that "Foster's" look, and the task was tedious. Hopefully Adobe will adress this issue for expanded creative power. ( by the way, thanks ape, again, for your advice on the matter)
Other than this, Flash and a Cintiq have revolutioned my idea of 2d animation, and I can only hope the software it will develop these new tools.
Are you on a Mac by any chance? The only time I've had a problem with the vertical scroller, was the few times I played with MX2004. I've gone back to MX. My computer is borderline for using 2004 anyway, I expect that it's a systems overload problem. But the Mac folks have never been happy with Flash since MX, and Macromedia didn't seem to care to fix things.
And like Ape said if you are going to tween something put it on a separate layer, or nest your clips. As to ease in and out, I don't really use it that much.
I look forward to an enhanced line tool where the ends don't always have to be curved and then manipulated with the bezier tool. That would be a real time saver.
Shape tweening is something I've only used twice, because it's such a pain in the butt, and the results really aren't that great.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
I like what can be done in Flash quite a bit. I think my requests typically come from using other software applications (primarily Maya and After Effects).
Basically, it can all be done in Flash as is. I'm mostly just hoping for some tools that I know from experience work very nicely in AE/Maya and would really help out the animator in Flash. Primarily the Ease In/Out vs. an actual graph editor. Sure you can get the same effects in Flash with more frames and using the ease dialogue (and sure you need to add the frames in Maya/AE for control), but a graph would really be swell when it comes to cleaning up your animation.
That and an x-sheet for doing frame by frame stuff would be pretty cool, too.
Like I said, nothing that keeps Flash from doing a good job, just stuff that would help it do an even cooler job. ;)
Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com
Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight
I should clarify. I'm not talking about multiple symbols at the same time; I'm talking about one symbol, then another at a separate key with no tweens between. I want to tween motion between the same symbols and not have to have a separate layer for each symbol. The timeline gets all too full all too quickly as it is. Flash is smart enough to handle it, just not all the time. That's the annoying part.
WRT f-curves and keying, if there was an f-curve option you wouldn't have to set as many keys to get it to do what you want re: slow ins/outs. If you want to use Flash's ease, then extra keys in between two main keys are impossible, since it eases from key to key, not over the range.
I guess I'm basically asking for more control, not a Mac-style "we know what's best for you" approach.
Phacker - I'm on a PC. I only use my Mac for video work, and only then because one of my major clients insisted on it.
I have been reading all these post about Flash, Maya, and After Effect. I am using Painter, is that enough to publish a web animation to my web site? I also have Final Cut so I can cut and paste and do some sound.
I have to admit I love Flash, but I also know it's not perfect. If not for Flash, I would have never tried animating (and some would consider that a good thing :p). My biggest beef with Flash right now is the use of shared symbols/libraries. It seems really inconsistent. One symbols works, another one doesn't. Some books go off about how much file size you can save with shared symbols, but they don't mention the time you'll lose fiddling with them until your brain bursts. And yes there's the problem with multiple symbols on a level. That makes Flash go boinkers. But overall, Flash has been a boon to semi-poor wanna-be animators.
In the end, nothing will ever replace good old analog animation (the black and white days were amongst the best). Unfortunately, the public tolerates bad animation and since bad animation costs less to make, well, what's a company to do!!!??! South Park has been a terrible influence on the overall quality of animation. The show can be extremely funny, but it sent the message that animation skills aren't important to make lots of dough. Not only that, South Park probably wouldn't work if it actually had GREAT animation. So go figure! :confused:
Shared libraries and symbols, they worked in version 5, but something they did when they went to MX, broke the whole thing. I had over 200 files linked with shared libraries on my site. I had to totally rebuild it. I've never even thought of using them again. Macromedia kept saying they couldn't reproduce the bug. So of course they never fixed it.
To be honest I always suspected a player incompatibility, but if your viewers can't view it as you planned what's the use.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
When it comes to bug, you should think about uninstalling the program, then reinstall it. Sometimes all you need to do is through the preferences away.
I'm not to fond of flash for animation mostly because I find it very limited in it's aproach to traditional animation. That is where Toonboom or USanimation comes in. It's so much more intuitive for animation, meaning everything that an animator needs is built in and greared towards actual animation. I.e. there is a field guide built into the program, plus camera moves are designed so that you can deal with it in a more visual basis. Plus dealing with lip sync is sooo much easier as well, with an intigrated x-sheet.
Now, I don't really hate flash, I know that it's a really powerful tool if used properly, it's just that it get's a bad rap because people tend to not use it properly very often... mostly because the average joe can use it without really much skill in animation. However, it's a pretty good tool to clean up and color an animation done in pencil.
Lindsey Keess
Animator
There's something I don't quite understand. How is having an X-sheet in a program make things easier? I know what an x-sheet is, and how it's used in a studio setting, but what I don't get is how it makes things easier for the indepenent guy making his or her own animated short? I've seen quite a few people that want that feature in Flash. Just wondering.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
It's something that makes planning out the timing much easier. I really dissliked the Idea of X-sheets when I first saw them because I thought they made it way to technical. But when you plan out the lip sync and write it out on a x-sheet it makes planning out the timing so much easier. When added to the program you can actually plan you scene out within the program itself. Also if you already planned out your scene on a paper x-sheet, it becomes less complicated to translate that into the program. With flash it becomes more difficult with it's basic timeline. Which is why I said it's better to use it to clean up pencils. It's sort of like the difference between short devision and long devision in mathematics. One is just writing out the problem with nothing visual to help you solve it therefore you almost need to already know the answer without having to write anything down, the latter gives you a visual and sytematic way to tackle the problem.
Lindsey Keess
Animator
personally i think US animation dosent even come into it considering it costs like 20 times what Flash or Toon Boom do.
Believe me it was uninstalled and reinstalled numerous times before I resorted to rebuilding my whole site, and modifying over 200 files.
Shared libraries were mainly used in site building to reduce file size. In my Scooter cards many symbols are reused from card to card, but when MX came out those links no longer worked, and the biggest problem with my site was that every card used the same symbol in it's preloader file. So none of my cards preloaded any longer.
It was reported many times by the group at Flashkit, and it actually seemed that most that were reporting the problem were Mac users I was one of the rare PC users that reported it, but I am not sure how many really utilized it to reduce and optimize site performance. So that may have skewed the user statistics also.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
I use Flash by necessity. It's the only 2D program I know of that supports object-oriented programming and optimizes for the web. I tried some of those other titles, but they seemed to be focused more on specific methods of traditional animators. In my opinion Flash better serves the future, where animators will be programmers.
I kind of agree Rabbit, just because it also allows you to develop animation that is also interactive. That kind of takes things a step beyond broadcast animation, and should open up lots of vistas for those with the foresight to take things a step beyond. And not just for games, but to involve your audience and make them part of your experience. You've been doing that with your mysteries series.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
"where animators will be programmers"
I dunno if that is so true for the future. While many 3D artists need a general knowledge of algebra and some calc, I don't see us all having to write massive lines of code to create good acting. And for many animators, math isn't a strong point. The software should evolve so that animation can take place more effectively, and let the TDs handle the hiccups.
Absolutely. If anything software is becoming easier and easier to use. In the past you needed to be a programmer to animate on a computer. Now most people can use a high-end program like Maya and never need to look at any code. It's there if you need it, but for the average user (or those with a TD department) you probably won't need to. Flash has really opened up animation to a huge number of people because of its ease of use.
And x-sheets are incredibly handy when it comes to organizing and dealing with frame by frame animation. Granted much of Flash's typical user base doesn't do a HUGE amount of frame by frame stuff, it would be handy for lip synch and those times when motion/shape/path tweens won't work and you need a set of new drawings. Basically, it's just another tool that helps organize the huge amount of information that's created in the animation process.
Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com
Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight
Well, I've tried Flash, Toon Boom, and Moho, and found that they're all quite good, but your choice depends only on what you have to do. Of course, I have the educational version of Flash, and my version of TBS is not xactly the latest, but I guess they haven't changed that much. Moho is certainly great for photo-animation, its weak spot being that for optimized drawings you must draw in it, when most of us are accustomed to draw with a good ol' pencil and then scan. I sppose Illustrator can help, but I don't have that. Since Flash and Toon Boom are compatible, I take stuff from one to the other, depending on what I need to do. A classical scene of a vampire dissolving into a bunch of bats, i did it in flash, taking advantage of the possibility of reusing the same bat symbol, and drawing motion lines. then, for a part with old-fashioned frame-by-frame, paper drawn animation with a few camera moves, the choice was Toon Boom.
And, oh, yes, it's about time those who make programs realize that us simple people feel more confident using a slider for parameters and seeing what's happening, rather than an input box where you've to guess a number. (That's the trouble with camera moves in Moho, where you can grab and move in two dimensions, but back and forth is just by numbers... it's soo easy in Toon Boom!)
God I hope not.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Ewomack, I think that is Flash's greatest gift. True you do get a lot of bad animation out there because of it, but it has definatly opened the door for people that normally wouldn't have tried animation, and that's a good thing.
DSB, could you posibbly post a clip of your animaiton that is giving you problems with the motion tween. There are two other things that I can think of it being. One you have to make sure you are tweening actual "graphic symbols," and not "groups." For some reason, groups don't tween right. The other problem it might be is if you changed the center points from one key to the other. I had that problem when I first tried tweening. Other wise, I don't know what it would be with out seeing what you did. I don't know about shared libraries so I can't say if it might or might not be that.
As for ease-in/ease-out in the same motion. Do a tween at "0" add a key to the middle of your tween, or where ever you want, then go to the first key and ease-out, then go to the middle key and add some ease-in. Adjust as neccessary.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
I appreciate the offer Ape, but it's neither of those things. I've been at this long enough to know what I'm doing (partly because I've done both of those things in the past and seen the result). Based on what you wrote, I don't think I'm describing the issue clearly, but I don't know how to describe it differently so I should probably drop it.
Don't get me wrong; this is not a huge issue in my daily work. I've just noticed an inconsistency in how Flash treats this. It's generally triggered by doing "that, then this" instead of "this, then that". I'd be happy if it either did or didn't work consistently, but it isn't like that.