2d animation

Rhinokey

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qOEJ-1X-w58

a bit BACK I was asking for recomendations on 2d animation software, Cholden and myself are planning on making a 2d animated series,.. which well.. requires one of us to learn to animate, so i jumped on it.. still verry beginery, but i'm progresisng

Ninjas

That's looking pretty cool. How long did it take, and what software did you decide on?

EricElwell

Hey, I like the start you've got there. Some positive feedback is the simplicity of the characters for roughing out the animation. I also like the way the knees are bent to give the character a bit of wieght. Some things that I would point out: there's a bit of growing in just that short clip, you want to make sure to keep the same volume. That being said, you can play with stretching the character to give him a little more bounce, so long as you keep the same volume. like when he raises his arms, you could stretch his torso as a vertical ellipse, when he comes down from the jump and hits the floor, you can stretch that ellipse horizontally to give a better feeling of mass. You do extremes in quick frames to give it a little snap. A little hard to explain, you might be able to see what I mean from this animation.

I hope that little tidbit helps. There were a bunch of little things like that that helped me. I got a ton of help from Joe Maruschak on a recent project we worked on, I'd definitely be happy to share what I'd learned there if you'd like.

btw, I'm also interested in hearing what software you decided on?

e_x

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Rhinokey

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FFBla1-43pM updated

any tips are appreciated, tho now its mostly just a lot or practice, i'm reading thru hte animators survival kit book now,

i'm using toon boom now.. well the demo.. it seems real nice may have to get it when i get out of debt,, yeah i noticed the growing also, more preactice i guess will help

plan on finishing this tommorow

aesir

I did a couple years of school with the whole tradional animation route and made a few films... Glad im onto 3d now

For someone who doesnt have experience animating, nice effort! However, what you made is extremely robotic. Its like you made a start position, and an end position, and then moved the character a set amount for each frame. There are no parts of the animation where the character is either holding a position or one where he has sped up his movement. Its all at the same speed, which really kills it.

And smart move on getting the animators survival kit. Thats a traditional animator's bible. Do what it says.

Jeremy Lindstrom

need to put a few more 'tweens in there or hold a pose for a couple seconds, most cartoons shoot in 2's.. it's way too fast.. but not bad for your first try.. Toonboom is the way to go currently.. Retas is what the pros use alot overseas but it's pretty expensive too

Rhinokey

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qOEJ-1X-w58 still far from perfection dek when you say shoot in 2's you mean show each frame 2 times/? i tried that(some of the first of this is in 2;s and it seems reall jerky, i plan on going in and changing them 2's into seperate tweens,

aesir

shooting on 2's means that for 24 frames (1 second for film), you would draw 12 drawings. If you were shooting on ones, then you would draw all 24 frames in that second. I find its usually best to shoot most things on 2's, except for fast actions, which I tend to do on 1's.

Toomas

Flash is used a lot for animated films too, i dont know tho how much it costs compared to the competition.

fogmann

There is another 2D animation program that is I think really obscure, but pretty nice. It's called Moho and costs about $100. The cool thing about it is that it has bones with sort of automatic IK, so you can animate using bones - that would probably be more useful if you weren't going for frame by frame animation. The bones also have some kind of physic simulation, but pretty basic though, for example, the bones can act like springs and bounce around and jiggle. It's a bit weird program, and takes some time getting used to. As far as Flash goes, well, I like its vector paint a lot, but I think it didn't much advance in terms of animation; it seems to me that developers were mostly focusing on improving ActionScript and other stuff for building web applications and kind of neglected animation features for a while.
You can check Moho out, it has demo as well:
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/index.shtml
Finally, there's After Effects and Combustion. Ah yeah, I think I forgot to mention Mirage by Bauhaus, I played with it once and seems to be great for frame by frame animation, it has a neat light table feature.

aesir

yea, I've always used after effects.

EricElwell

Yeah, I would definitely agree with aesir, the animation feels very linear, and that's hurting it a great deal. I'm not sure how much work you've done so far, and I don't want to come off wrong, but the best way to learn is to just burn through a ream of paper in rough sketch form. This is why I prefer physical media especially for animation. So if you have access to any equipment for physical media I would strongly suggest using that medium.

I know this isn't really the same type of animation you plan to do, and I don't intend to hijack this thread by any means, but I think you might benefit from the principles I tried to articulate in this write up. Some will not apply because of the difference between optimization for a game vs animation shorts, what I intended readers to walk away with was primarily the idea of iteration, and I think that you would benefit from that as well, be it characters or animations segments. Maybe you will be able to glean some ideas and methods from it, maybe not.

Rhinokey

i wrote out a reply! but when i submited it told me the form was no longer valid!

heres a shorter version of what i daid

great write up there eric, a lot of that is usefull for me, altho i don't plan on going the pen and paper route, i liek working digitaly,

i'm reading thru animators survival kit.. not just skimming it, but reading i front to bac, and i'm picking up a lot of interesting stuff i'm looking foreward to trying out

Gmanx

Try Monkeyjam:

http://www.giantscreamingrobotmonkeys.com/monkeyjam/

It's a free pencil-tester, it's a while since I used it, but I remember it being simple, quick and dirty.

Rhinokey

workin on some style ideas

cholden

these are awesome! I can't wait to get some voices down for these guys. I need to practice more.

Rhinokey

thnom suggest i put the outlines on it,, and tho i was skeptical, i tried it, and loved it!

cholden

I had this idea for a theme song, here's a few verses that came to mind. Imagine this in an 80s rock montage style music. It'd be great to have these guys flying through space and beating up aliens even though this would never happen on the show (a la aqua teen)

You know it's tough being American,
cause we're the BEST at everything!
And how we have to prove that,
against wizard, aliens, ghosts and things!
That's why we need pro wrestlers!
Someone that's tough and we can look up to!
That's why we need these wrestlers!
To fight evil and save YOU!
So train hard! Put your body one the line!
Make that comeback one last time!
Saving the WORLD! U-S-A
Saving the children EV-RY-DAY!

Rhinokey

another varriant of the monster character for your ignoring pleasure

cholden

lol, nice! I like the Abyss hair and duck taped head. Kruger sweater is a great touch, as is the bloody apron. I'm a bit torn between the chain and the shovel. They are both great weapons for him to carry. Maybe his boots should look like he tromped through the mud (just got done burying somebody). I love this stuff, can't wait to see more!

Ramucho

looks good! but imo the colours look way too saturated, try it with a disney style of colours, something along the lines of Hercules

Rhinokey

new pic more desaturated colors

MoP

haha, that's cool

Rhinokey

snemmy

characters are looking great!

i like the desautrated colours. might want to make teh blood on the monster guy's apron a deeper red. it tends to be the main focal point right now. have fun animating those chains

cholden's theme would sound awesome with the 80s metal music

are these last two guys spectators?
how's the animation look with the thick outline?

Rhinokey

last two are the normal kid that gets somehow shoved into the wrestling school/fed to train with all the nearly insane wrestlers,, he's pretty much the straight man. the voice of sanity, when one of the wrestlers decide the best way to get into the circus when they are broke out of money, is to disguise themselves as elephants, he's the one that goes "thats insane!" but they still do it anyways