Anime DreamsFlash animations, Photoshop tricks, cartooning, and graphics fun

Simple Flash Anime can often be a better fit

We usually try way too hard to come up with impressive Flash. We spend hours trying to orchestrate really complex movements, and generally end up tearing our hair out just to come up with a cartoon or anime that will WOW the customer, or our friends and family.

Cartooning and Anime - Finding Inspiration Everywhere

As I touched on in my previous post, one of the most difficult challenges for an illustrator or animator is finding inspiration. You know you want to create a new cartoon, illustration, or anime, yet that blank screen or blank piece of paper keeps staring you in the face daring you to try. Yet for a few lucky artists it doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. Why? What’s their big secret?

Creating A Flash Cartoon Animation - Where To Start

Almost all of the cartoonists, manga-ka and comic strip artists started off by drawing characters from other sources. Developing your own style and unique characters takes time, and lots of it. If you do a Google search and track down the very first Peanuts comic strip you will be surprised at how simple and almost primative Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang appears.

Flash with Soundtracks - Yoda

Title: Flash Soundtracks
Tools Used: Swishmax
Length: Continous
Audio: Three wav clips
Download Size: 47k
Format: Flash SWF
Notes: The challenge was to include sound with some of my Flash animations. This was a 'learning' exercise - trying to figure out how to embed the audio, and have it start/stop at the right times. Some 'side benefits' were-

• Masked sprites to create the eye movement - this was fun, and something that will be very useful for future projects
• All the animation takes place in one Swish scene which was set to act as the background. The individual audio clips and corresponding text were added as additional scenes using the same background.

Virtual Exercise with Flash

Title: Virtual Exercise
Tools Used: Swishmax
Length: Continous
Audio: None
Download Size: 22k
Format: Flash SWF
Notes:

I really wanted to go out kickbiking this weekend, but the weather decided it had other plans. A typhoon hit Japan, and for the past few days it's been impossible to log any physical exercise time outside. But, why should that keep me from enjoying my kickbike?

This Flash animation was built using a series of nested sprites. The bike is a group of shapes with the inside of the wheels using a radial gradient. The kicker was built based on an early project, but with full Swish shapes this time, and then animated through one complete kick cycle. That was then grouped as a sprite representing a kick with the left foot. That was copied and edited by reversing the layering of the legs, shins, and feet to form a sprite for a right foot kick. They were then animated so that each sprite does three kicks before switching to the other foot. The result was then grouped into a new sprite to facilitate movement and rotation of the kicker.

The moving background was constructed using simple shapes and groups. The stream has some animation to try to simulate running water, but it needs more experimentation before it looks right.

The tree and tori gate shadows were constructed by copying each object, then grouping it as a shape. The shape was filled with black, flipped vertically, shortened, skewed, and the alpha fill set to 20%. All of the background elements were then grouped into a single sprite that was animated to move from right to left giving the impression that the kicker is moving from left to right.

Key learnings:

• Planning ahead makes a tremendous amount of difference. A little upfront thinking and analysis showed that the left and right leg kicking motions are exactly the same so it was easy to animate once, then copy and change the relative order (bring forward, send back) of the leg elements.
• Using overlapping fade-in effects rather than place/remove effects made the transitions from one leg to the other very smooth, as long as the leg doing the fading (in or out) was the one on top. You can also use this technique at the end of the animation so that it doesn't flash when it restarts from the beginning.

For more information on kickbiking, see Kickbiking Japan

Balloons

Title: Balloons
Background: Simple Flash animation
Length: Continous
Audio: None
Download Size: 30k.
Format: Flash SWF
Notes: Just experimenting with Flash to see what is possible.

Present for the Teacher - Embedded Test

Title: Present for the Teacher
Storyline: On graduation day all the students bring a present for the teacher...
Length: 1.5 minutes
Audio: None
Download Size: 1.4 meg.
Format: Quicktime MOV

Click link below to view

Simpleton Goes To Market-Embedded Test

Title: Simpleton Goes To Market
Storyline: Simpleton follows his mother's instructions perfectly...
Length: 3 minutes
Audio: None
Download Size: 2.9 meg.
Format: Quicktime MOV

Click link below to view

Simpleton Goes To Market - Separate Page Test

Click image to view
Title: Simpleton Goes To Market
Storyline: Simpleton follows his mother's instructions perfectly...
Length: 3 minutes
Audio: None
Download Size: 2.9 meg.
Format: Quicktime MOV