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The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
After all of our arrow wounds have healed from Valentine's Day, it's the 15th tomorrow as I write this, and that means a new monthly tutorial, a guest tutorial in the Tips and Tricks section provided by our own angelize, and new Giveaways—plural, there's two this month—provided by Big Frank and yours truly, Other Gary.
I think you'll have fun with the tute this month, it's a long one, and I think I cover Xara's animation features in the sort of depth that'll get you interested at very least, and productive if you have a hankering to create your own cottage animation studio.
Oh, and the name "PIXAR" is already taken, okay? I looked.
:)
My Best,
Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
For the time being all I'm seeing is the January stuff. I really do have a crap ISP!
I can't wait to watch whatever gems Gary has come up with this time. Roll on DNS replication! :thx
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Thanks, Frank.
Um, we all think our ISP is for crap, but that's not why you can only see January.
Fool Disclosure: to get a proper link up to this thread on the Feb edition of Xara Xone, this thread has to come first, premature as this might seem!
:)
Get some rest, and then tip-toe down in the morning to see what's under the tree, okay?
My Best,
—Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
It's 6:45am in New York, and February is up.
We need a nip and a tuck here and there, but all new content can be accessed.
Thanks angelize, Barbara, and Frank!
My Best,
Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
I got notification on the video on Utube last night, so I got to watch it a day early. I loved it and I think you slowed down a bit and that made it perfect.
Thanks
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Yeah, I made sure to pop at least half a dozen of those funny red pills you can buy in the park before reading the script, Grace.
Okay: if it's perfect, let's commence with the "what did I learn?" part of the process and start posting members example files and questions and such.
My Best,
—Gary
P.S. Frank, Javier? You folks up for the translations? Barbara will be negotiating it, so can you please get in touch with her? TIA!
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Hi Gary,
I just got the link to Xar tutorial for February here on west coast Canada. I watched the animation tutorial and got quite a lot of animation ideas from it. I am dabbling with Cyberlink Power director now and this
tutorial will add to my arsenal.
Great.
Jim
p.s As a comment of video tutorials I found the narration a bit fast but it could be cause I am hearing impaired...
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Hi Scotty, and thanks—
Well, I guess I went from 400% speed on the first tutorial, to 150%, and still have to slow it down a little. :)
Happily, as soon as a couple of our members who are bi-lingual check in and as soon as Barbara is finished coding the cc on YouTube, you'll have subtitles, but right now, did you know you can download a transcript of the lecture in PDF file format?
The link is right there on the Tutorials page, down and to the left of the embedded video.
Attachment 87289
My Best,
Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Hi Gary,
thanks for the quick response...yes i did know about the download but I watch the online version first to see if there is a new item I don't know, if so then I download the pdf for future reference. I mentioned the narration but I would see if other members have same thoughts. I am getting old and slow....
Jim
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Scotty—
Um, do you see any spring chicken in that video? :)
None of us is getting younger, not even Dick Clark anymore.
For the record, what I did differently than the last video tutorial is I did not edit out any pauses in the voice-over.
Still, I had a lot to cover and the silly thing is more than 10 minutes long, and even on a good day with an announcer on barbiturates—not everyone is going to hear every word, and that's why the PDF, the cc, and translations to come.
Good luck with Power director...I'm not sure but I think it can handle alpha channels and if not, I do know for a fact that you can chromakey out a Xara animation background if you use solid green or other solid key color.
—Gary
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Well Gary I learnt a lot from the bouncing ball tut. because I've never done an animation before, so I will try to expand on what you said and shown in the tut. on something of my own, says he hesitantly :D, I've uploaded the Xara file so anyone can view in what ever browser they use and give me some feedback on what could have been done better :rolleyes:
Stygg
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Hey there, stygg—
You've never done an animation before, eh?
Well, I'd say you sure know how to follow my lead and you reproduced my own bouncing ball just about flawlessly. I think mine has less energy (like I myself do), but I never mentioned the exact height for the apogee of the ball, so let me revise and tell you that you did the tutorial perfectly, five stars, man.
Aside from taking this tutorial's result to the conclusion I showed of putting it in a composite scene (like with After Effects), you can do variations on the bounce cycle, too, as I think you're alluding to in the future?
Why does it have to be a ball? Wouldn't it be funnier to do a bouncing anvil, or a bouncing chicken? Or a chair?
Consider this also: you could do an animation cycle by introducing the ball in frame 2 at stage left, and not only does it bounce up and down, but it also bounces left to right, and finally off stage right, only to reappear again at left as the cycle repeats.
I believe anyone can get at least four or five interesting animation cycles out of this simple cartoon bounce: you know, anyone who downloaded Bryce from an earlier post here that Barbara made Download it free until Feb. 29th!, you could render a new background for the ball.
I encourage everyone who suffers through my 10 minute tutorial to vary the elements. Mix it up: the animation itself is the star of what you learn and the shapes are only players.
I think Shakespeare said that.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm going to let this month simmer with members for a while. I'm unsure whether our membership prefers text-based tutorials, or videos, because Frances' fractal tutorial is drawing a lot of positive response this month, as it should.
If you'd like me to toss in a Gary Priester-style tutorial three or four times a year, please let me know. My job is to provide you with what you want and need to know, and not for me to do whatever interests me myself!
My Best,
Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
if its possible with xara flash implementation, its good to vary the timing of the cycle and introduce squish - the rate of shape deformity and the rate of change of velocity [acceleration] should not be constant throughout the motion path, that's not what happens in nature - lots of stuff out in google about animation timing, including for bouncing balls - see attached - note the slowing down effect due to gravity and the effect acceleration/deacceleration has on distorting the shape...
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Thank you for your comments Gary and I will try a a mix as you suggest, a ball, anvil whatever. With regards to your question Videos or text tuts. I personally like them both, video because you can actually see what is being done and the text tuts. because you can easily refer to them. I have a folder that's falling over wiyh G.P's tuts. and besides, I think you would present a really good text tut. judgeing by the quality of your vids. so as you have just said yourself to me, mix it up!:D
Stygg
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Thanks for the suggestions and contributions, folks.
handrawn's reference for bouncing is a good one. And yes, you can very speed in a Flash animation, although please let me point out that Xara's animation engine might be Flash, but its output can be anything you like, AVI, GIF, or SWF, so don't immediately think that your presentation is constrained to a Flash animation; it's not.
Now if you want to get tricky and fool your audience for a moment or two, create an animation that cycles twice, in other words you put two cycles in the animation and then time the second one a little more slowly.
So that when the ball goes through a bounce cycle, once it's fast and the second time it's slow. Or the second time the ball lands in a slightly different place than the first time. The Shockwave standard is pretty tolerant about the number of unique key frames you have in an animation: 5 or 10 won't significantly impact on the saved file size.
handrawn, does this touch on what you're showing? The random quality?
There are a lot of things you can do, based on a simple motion that cycles. Yes, very the speed, the destination, if you want to get bizarre, change the colour of the ball over time!
The key to keeping your audience's attention is to make your animation cycle as visually interesting as possible, because the point is to build something that has a 5 second cycle, but keeps your audience watching for 15 seconds.
Attached is one of the most ambitious SWF animations I was ever stupid enough to create. I think there are four complete drawings in the file, but I think many people would watch is for several seconds. Again, this is a cycle: the rocking horse goes forward, to the center, back and then center again.
-g-
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
I think the rocking horse is great Gare, might be a little fast but nonetheless very nice. I am looking forward to doing the bouncing ball tutorial, but so far I've had not time to do it. I will continue to follow this thread with interest. Handrawn brings up an interesting point and I am looking forward to seeing if there is an answer, but as far as I know it isn't possible at least not without much additional work and frames.
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
sorry gary - the only animation I have personal hands on experience with [leaving aside animated gifs :D] is cell based, when I say 'flash' what I meant was 'tweening' in the flash sense..
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Okay, to dis-ambiguate here :), the tweening Xara's animation engine performs is independent of the duration something is onscreen, which is not straightforward, but your illustration of bouncing spheres is certainly do-able, handrawn.
• If you want the ball in the tutorial example, to suspend longer at its apogee (shades of Warner Brothers characters lingering after they've run off a cliff!), you'd assign a longer duration to this frame by double-clicking its duration on the Animation Gallery and then entering a new value in Properties.
• If you want a ball to exhibit more characteristics within a certain duration, you create more keyframes at probably very short intervals. By doing this, you can accomplish subtle rolling effects for the ball (understanding that this is 2D animation and there are perspective things that are wicked hard to accomplish).
I worked for Henry Selick back in college (Henry directed Coraline in 2009), and this guy used to keep cue sheets and all timings in his head! If he wanted to slow down action in the good old analog way, he'd hand me two keyframe cells and tell me to put 40 frames in between, for example.
So I guess it's not all that different from traditional animation, this Xara animation stuff, except you don't have to pay a keyframer, and you don't get the sort of quality, usually, that we used to see in animation's Golden Age.
I think one of our members who runs Zebbtunes and has a demo reel up on YouTube has got this animation stuff nailed, and I admire his talent and the reality that he's keeping animation alive.
It's not all Shrek :)
-g-
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wizard509
I think the rocking horse is great Gare, might be a little fast but nonetheless very nice. I am looking forward to doing the bouncing ball tutorial, but so far I've had not time to do it. I will continue to follow this thread with interest. Handrawn brings up an interesting point and I am looking forward to seeing if there is an answer, but as far as I know it isn't possible at least not without much additional work and frames.
Ah! Here's something I failed to touch upon: when you do an animation these days, you have to consider your target output. There was a time when a cartoon was 24 frames per second, but no anymore. The rocking horse is probably too fast because you have a good internet connection, wizard, and that's something a content creator cannot anticipate or really cope with, except for using something other than Flash.
AVI, QuickTime, Mpeg-4 are all frame-dependent so what you film is what you get. I think I had the rocking horse set up to .1 seconds per frame, because at the time I created it, much of the audience for it had a 1 or 1.5 transfer speed, compared to an easy 2 today.
I guess that's why it's important to always keep your resource files for animation, for when technology changes.
-g
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
zeb makes all his drawings in xara and animates them in ToonBoom AFAIK - I like toonboom; I like TVPaint too [which is non-vector] but can't afford it :(
anyways - thanks for the info Gary, I just thought I'd throw in the example 'cos timing makes or breaks animation.... hopefully it will give others ideas....
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Yes, indeed. Timing can make or break 2D, 3D animation, comedy, plays, and other forms of entertainment.
It's good to come to the party with a concept, too. We had a phrase in advertising called "Dancing Bologna (baloney)" and it connotes stuff that gets your attention, but has no real substance. Sizzle without the steak, in other words.
A bouncing ball was a good tutorial example, because it's "creatively neutral." It's not entertainment per se, but the cartoon physics of squash and stretch are used all the time in cartoons.
And it shouldn't go without saying that Xara artwork (Xartwork?) is highly compatible with just about every other graphics product on the market.
My Best,
Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Hi Gary,
Great tutorial. The pdf with the video comes in handy.
cheers,
Jim Toal
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Glad you like it, Jim, and I hope it might come to some use for you in the future, either professionally or just for personal fun.
When you mention that the PDF comes in handy, was it good for reference after the video, or because (once again) my delivery was too fast?
Just trying to refine and improve based on feedback,
—Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Back to handrawn's example. I think he is talking about animations showing the effect of gravity. The ball goes up and gets progressively slower until it reaches apogee at which time it gains speed again on the way down. I'm not saying it's not possible with Xara but I am saying it would be difficult and requiring many extra steps to simulate the gravity effect. I'll have to try that and see, cause I might be wrong.
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
As long as you have both Handrawn's picture and the tutorial as a reference, I don't see why anyone can't—with a little trial and error—come up with a faithful animated representation of a bouncing ball with Earth gravity.
That wasn't the point of the tutorial—I wanted to get people interested in a verifiably underused Xara feature, and cartoonish exaggeration—which has been used in animation studios for 70 years (squash and stretch cartoon physics)—felt like a good entry point for me to use.
When I suggested viewers perform variations on what I showed—a bouncing chair or something bouncing while changing colors—well, an accurate representation of a ball bouncing and losing energy ultimately, is a good variation, too!
My Best,
—Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Yes I understand that wasn't the point, I just thought it interesting and something to consider.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
wizard509
Back to handrawn's example. I think he is talking about animations showing the effect of gravity
Hi Larry
yes
the apogee [point furthest away from centre in orbital path] is an example of an 'inertia point', that is an instant in the motion of an object when it is actually very fleetingly at rest [ie not moving]
traditionally animators 'slow out' when motion picks up and 'slow in' when motion slows down - what those terms mean is that you 'bunch up' your drawings and thereby slow down the uniformity of motion, but you do it in such a way as to make the increase in speed visible in the 'slow out' and the decrease in speed visible in the 'slow in'
the attached shows a pendulum with the [slow out slow in] chart that represents the frames, and you can see the bunching [its a simplified set of course] - doesn't take a lot of imagination to turn that pendulum chart into a ball bouncing from floor to ceiling [hopefully]
in cell animation all these frames would be drawn [both the keys and the 'inbetweens']
that covers the timing - I guess you can use tweening in xara to change the shape by generating the inbetweens, rather than having to draw all of them yourself
[note 'slowing out' is often called 'easing out' and 'slowing in' 'easing in']
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
A very nice aside, Handrawn; this is great stuff for anyone who wants to get beyond the act of animating and immerse themselves in the art of animation.
And I think there's a certain point (of ambition) where Xara's native animation tools cannot carry you to, for example, a 10 minute animation. It's not the right tool, however, Xara can make quick work of animated titles. Boris wants $$$ for an After Effects plug-in that essentially does what you can do by hand with titling in Xara and export with an alpha.
__________________________________________________ _
Ease in and Ease out are natural phenomena, they exist both in the cartoon realm and in the real world. The beginning of an action has built-in acceleration, while when a body loses energy or transfers it, there is a natural ease out of the motion, a de-acceleration. The best example I can think of is a baseball player as they swing the bat and connect with the ball. Of interest in this analogy is that the baseball bat will slow for two reasons: the transfer of energy to the ball, and the baseball player's inclination to slow down after a sufficient amount of swing has been completed.
In traditional animation, and digital when the folks know what they're doing, this Ease In and Ease out motion non-linear phenomenon is exaggerated, and that's perhaps what makes Porkie Pig, and Buzz Lightyear, et al, seem fantastic and real at the same time. The way in which they move is hyper-real, natural physics are bent, and occasionally broken, but respect is always paid to what goes on in the Real World.
-g-
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Thanks you guys. Very interesting information.
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Well Larry, Wizard and Gary (seems familar that, can't quite put my finger on it);)) You've lost me with all the jargon so I'll stick to bounce, squash and stretch for now until I get the hang of animation. It's good fun learning though :D Had to slow the speed down a bit of the original to get the extra animation to do what I wanted, I'm no expert but it looks not to bad for a bit of fun.
Stygg
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
That would be, "Curly, Larry, and What's His Name"?
:)
You clearly did learn something, stygg...that's a fun little piece and I'm thrilled that you did a variation on the original.
The only suggestion I'd offer is that the little ball that does the clockwise thing behind #1 and #2 in the foreground needs to arc up and over, instead of making a linear transition. I'm not sure how easily this could be done without the XAR file, and certainly not worth it if it doesn't bother you, its creator. I hate it when others step on my personal expression, so I try to be mindful of this with others.
Here's a larger-than-necessary animated GIF I did a long time ago, drawing in with Xara, to work the squash and stretch as a cycle across the screen:
>>>Ball bounces across stage<<<
There were just too many creative possibilities with Xara's animation engine to ignore it as a tutorial. It would be easy to create two or three more in the distant future, if there's an interest.
My Best,
Gary
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Thanks for your comments Gary and that Gif is great. I myself would like future tuts. on animations if just to be a bit more knowledgeable on the subject, I know I can read it up but nothing beats being shown as in your vid. tuts. As regards stepping on my personal expression, well I have no problem what so ever with that so I've uploaded the file and if you get time, I would be grateful to be shown the movement you mentioned, after all if you don't ask you won't progress :D
Best regards
Stygg
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I've attached your file with a minor tweak here and there, stygg.
I need to add a frame, and still not mess up the overall animation: frame 2 is a duplicate of frame 1, where I eased the 3 balls in front down a little and then used frames 1 2 and 3 to "arc" the tiny ball instead of dashing mid-air to the right between 2 and 3.
I also reduced the first duration to .1 seconds to smooth out the transition between the last frame, frame 1 and then 2.
I think your idea is very funny without a verbal explanation. It's just old-style entertainment, where no intellectual play on words needs to be made or anything, your variation is just funny and entertaining.
How's about we return to animation late summer 2012?
My Best,
Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
Thanks for taking the time and adding exra input Gary, much appreciated. I will try to expand on what I've learned up to date and look forward to more on ani. late summer. :D
Stygg
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
It's not perfect, and perhaps you'd like to take a further editing session on what little I did to improve it, stygg.
The tiny ball, what as a character I consider the hero of the animation, has no visual reason for returning screen left after its apogee. See, as the audience I can buy into the ball bouncing up and the the right because perhaps before I started watching, it was tossed into the scene from screen left.
So I need to see a visual reason why the tiny ball eventually comes back to frame 1. An obvious fix would be to put someting like a plank sticking out of the ground for the tiny ball to bounce off in frame 5 or so.
Ideas?
I'm encourage that you and others like this sort of stuff.
Because in a small way it reflects a current trend on the web to feature video and animate stuff!
My Best,
—Gary
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
I don't have any ideas except that the tiny ball looks and acts like one of my favorite toys, the paddle ball. Where the ball is attacked by a rubber band of sorts and is being jerked back to it's starting point.
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
This sounds like a bonus tutorial for the month, Larry.
Attached is an illustration of a paddle ball.
Knock yourself out, so to speak. :)
Attachment 87479
Gary
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I'll see what I can do with it Gare, it may take me awhile though.
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Re: The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion
It's open to everyone and there is no time limit on the Xone, Larry!
I want to fill everyone's heads with playful inspiration, not anxiety over deadlines.
Let me say in advance that the illustration I put up here won't work as is in an animation. You'll need to do some simplifying, but I wanted the illustration up in case a paddleball is a regional toy or one that is only remembered by a specific age group.
Surfing around for an image to draw from, interestingly, it's being revived as a nostalgia toy.
Which is totally depressing because I have to admit to owning an original when I was a child in the Mesozoic Era.
—Gary
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Just made one more alteration to give the small ball a reason for returning to frame so to speak.:D
Stygg