Lately I’ve been trying to teach myself how to animate (on a very basic level) using Adobe Flash. Whilst I’m not even sure we’re allowed to animate for our final projects, nor do I think I’d be at a level where I’d feel comfortable taking that on anyway, I do believe this is relevant in terms of production and is worth posting about none the less. If I’m honest, it’s actually taught me a lot about pre-production, and the value of storyboarding if you’re setting out to achieve something quite ambitious. I went into my first project quite blindly and really had a bad time when I realised that nothing looked impressive, and transitions didn’t make sense and movement didn’t look natural and its all because I didn’t plan the scene out first. Even a poorly animated scene can make sense logistically and in terms of angles used and positioning, etc. but mine did not, and I don’t even have a copy of it to show as an example. I got so frustrated with the whole process I deleted it… So moral of the story, don’t go into anything without at least thinking through the logistics of a scene.
To learn how to use the program I watched a series of video tutorials by an animator called Oney, and I’ll link to one below so you can have an idea of the basic level I’m working on. Be warned that he’s a crude guy at times, and the video is certainly not for everyone, but behind all that he really knows what he’s talking about and his tutorials really helped me out.
It took me a month or two before I got back into it after my first failed attempt, but this time I was a bit more rational. To begin with I started small and set out to learn really simple actions or small things like how to sync mouth movements to dialogue and how to ‘zoom’ in on action and how to make a character move from left to right across the frame. I’ve compiled some of my little experiments into a video to give an idea of the process I’ve been going through, and to better show my level of experience. It’s not everything, but I think my other stuff was just more of the same, and it wasn’t needed.
You can see I start off incredibly simple, with blinking being the only movement. I also learned how to ‘smooth’ which is where the lines seem to wobble, almost as if the animation is frame by frame, and it’s really just an artistic choice whether or not you use it. After that I do something a bit trickier and animate to dialogue. The only things I’m animating are the eyes, eyebrows and mouths, but this did mean a lot of time spent drawing the different mouth shapes for each character and listening through to match them up. I really have an appreciation for natural looking dialogue in animation now, it takes a very long time to sync by hand! After that I wanted to try frame by frame, and ended up with a five second clip of 70 frames, totalling 448 pairs of lips that I drew one at a time. I never thought that would be something I had the patience for, but I was actually really happy doing it and love the finished clip, even if it is only five seconds long. The last clip is a part of a bigger project I’ve started, inspired by R U OK? day. I’ve included this clip though before I think it really shows how planning can help. Although the animation isn’t all that tricky, nothing really moves and there isn’t any action taking place, I was still able to make it look as though it makes sense in a narrative world because there are backgrounds and facial expressions and cuts that make sense. Later on the character comes in contact with others, and I just know that although the animation is going to be pretty hard, the scene is planned out and that’s going to help no end. So I guess after all of that, that’s the man point to take from it. There’s obviously a lot more I take from it specific to animation, but just in regards to film in general that’s been the real eye opener. Have a plan.
