The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[stygg2003]

Cheers yet again for more feed back. I did understand about exaggeration in cartoon but all I was trying to show in the clip was, I had finally grasped the concept of the tiny ball being the star and needed exit stage right with a flip or trip as you suggested and then fall back again into frame without bouncing all over the floor. I will try and enhance the hand rail to accommadate the spring board effect better than a bit of metal jutting out, so that should keep me busy and then have a look at the bat and ball, that does look difficult. I hope I have not taken up to much of your time but I have learned alot with this months tut about something I was always wary of doing, animation

Stygg

[Gare]

Hi stygg—

You're not taking up my time; we're here to discuss the February tutorial and how artists can create variations on core principles.

And there aren't a lot of posts here, so my time is essentially your time. :)

By the way, if you're an on-watcher, feel free to chime in and post. One-way communication is a TV set, not a forum.

I've attached a XAR file I whipped together this morning to demonstrate two things: an animation cycle of a cartoon character flapping its arms, and "the larger picture"...how other elements can support the main "hero". I've got the sky moving downward so the character sort of looks like he's traveling upwards, the title grows larger, and to compete the animation (because I didn't have a good ending!), an end title closes out the animation.

This is far from perfect, if Zeb is watching this thread he's probably ROLFing, but it's just a demonstration of how cycles work in animation. By the way, I got the arms to pivot correctly as a ClipView shape within a no, fill, no outline circle, another trick you can use in Xara. And I'd advise anyone who wants to do something this simple to let the character's arms wave a few more times. My timing sucks in this example, but the principle is there—download the file and have at it!



FunnySkies.swf

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

That's really good Gary and effective, so the arm pivot in clipview is the same type as the one used for the shadow blend, no fill, no outline, send to back, select all, apply clipview? One last question, that's a lot of shapes in the sky background, looks almost like contours? Sorry to ask all the questions but I like to know the ins and outs of a cats perverbial

Stygg

[Gare]

Hi stygg—

I had no time this morning to draw a sky, so I could have used a very low-rez jpeg to keep the animation file size small, or...

I took one of our stock cloud images (Barb and I have a hard drive full, make good backgrounds!), and ran it through Vector Magic, perhaps the best auto-trace utility around, if you have the bucks and don't want to use Xara's Bitmap Tracer.

The other reason for an all-vector swf is that the result can scale. You use a bitmap in a swf, and it will look coarse if someone tries to play it full screen. Well, you yourself can see this with the diner image for the bouncing balls.

Yes, ClipView objects seem to agree with SWF output, stygg, and yes, I did the same thing with the arm as I did with the shadow for the ball.

You would find it wicked hard keeping the shape center off-center from frame to frame. I tried it once, no joy.

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Hi Gary, had a bit of fun with the skies ani. Can't say I got the arms flapping any better as regard timing but all in all another learning curve for me just having fun with this one.

Stygg

[Gare]

I'd say, "have MORE fun!!", stygg.

I think you're well on your way to Minimalist Story-Telling!

It's a fun, small idea, period.

Not sure, but the sky went to bitmap, didn't it? The reason why might be that you didn't name it, or you did a not-allowed transformation.

Oh, there are things call headline fonts and text fonts. That's Comic Sans you used? I'd suggest Impact or some heavier typeface, but that's always the call of the artist. There's a whole category of typefaces that are for display, and often they're called, for example "Benguiat Display", or whatever. Display fonts are heavied up a little so their thinnest stems don't make TV display buzz when the transmission tries to reconcile .7 pixels or whatever, you know?

If there's any other moves you want to perform on this file, I'd say go for it, and let's us take a look when you're done.

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

I forgot to inflat the ball. It does not bounce very well.

[stygg2003]

Hi Gary,
the sky you mentioned was me trying to be a smart ar#*! I made a couple of clouds in Xara on a linear background,stretched them out a bit, exported as a Jpeg then gave it that effect in Photo Zoner Studio. Not very good but I could'nt pinch all your props. thought I should contribute something Thanks for reminding me about Fonts, tend to forget about them and they can make s difference.

Stygg