Flash Animation Basics

From Anipedia

There are many helpful basics fo those who are beginner flash animators as well as those who have been using flash for a while which can make the final appearance and quality of a flash movie or game considerably better and this page will cover the basics on how to make the animation side of a flash better.

1 Colour and Shape
2 Coming Soon

[edit] Colour and Shape

Choosing the right colours and shapes for characters and backgrounds in flash animations is essential for the final products appearance. Beginners flashes all to often have a barrage of bright, bold colours and shapes which amount to a visual assault. There are simple ways to avoid this even if your drawing skills have not developed far.

[edit] Subtle and Realistic Tones

For our example we'll be using our poorly drawn friend here. As you can see he has many problems but we'll start with his colour.

His colours have all been selected from the pre-made colour panel in flash, this panel can be useful for many tones but it is generally better to create your own skin tones by using either of the colour panels. Darken the clothes to a more realistic colour for the fabric. Looking better already.

[edit] Refining Shape

It's very rare that you will draw a character exactly how you want first time, going over details in a character makes it look a lot better and it shows in the final product. The first thing to do after creating a character should be deleting all overlapping lines and those which extend too far.

[edit] Outlines

Different animators will choose different ways to create outlines depending on their style. A black outline drawn with the line tool is something that rarely looks good but can be needed when drawing in an anime style, but otherwise the best thing to do is either set the line to the same colour as the object it is surrounding but slightly darker, or to delete the line altogether.

[edit] Shape Tweaking

Flash is a vector based art program, which is a great thing as you can drag and transform the shapes all you want until they're just right. Were gonna move our friends features about to give him more character. In this case the hands, eyes and feet have been copied and pasted to ensure they are both the same size, the shoes have been flipped horizontally. Some small detail has been added in the form of thumbs.

[edit] Shading

Adding shading to a flash pretty much raises it's appearance by double. It shows you took into account the small details and makes the chacters seem to be interacting with surroundings. To add simple shading first think of where the light is coming from. Add a layer above the object to be shaded, this is so you can draw lines to seal off the shaded areas without having other objects distort them. The lines on the shading area should then be cut and pasted on the object layer then the area coloured in. The colour should be slightly darker than the unshaded colour if in a normal environment. The mouth has also been changed to a shape rather than the line tool to fit in with the style.

[edit] Gradients

I'm sure every flash animator is guilty of misusing gradients at the start of their career. Gradients can be used well if they display subtle changes and can be used well for shading. Here is an alternative shading technique using gradients instead.