AnimatioN!

Good answers Graphite man.

If one thinks Flash will give them a commercial advantge for full animation, they're shooting themselves in the foot.

Yeah, Flash isn't really ment to do full traditional animation. It CAN be done, but that's not it's strong suit. I always recomend Flash, because it's very flexable, easy to use and learn, and pretty cheap. I wouldn't say go out and buy it if you have nothing else, because there are way better programs to do pencil tests than Flash. But if you already have Flash, it can be used for it.

Nice list of books omnigon. I have 10 of the 13. Not really big on Hogarth though. I also found a really nice basic animation book was in Disney's Animation Kit. Or something of that name. It came with some pencils, paper, a really cheap pegbar, but the book was pretty well done. It covered a lot of the basics very simply with not a lot of techno jargon since it was ment for kids. If you can find that, it's pretty worth it. At least I think so.

Aloha,
the Ape

Agree. Conversely If flash is what you have and you are learning or working indepndantly, then go ahead.

First off, let me start by saying that I am also not a professional, but I have researched a lot of the same questions you have.

Let me point you to an example that might put everything more into perspective. First of all, I found the book "Producing independant 2d Character Animation" - Mark Simon very helpful for the more technical questions that I had. If you search the AWN web site, they ran a series of excerpts from the book that might get you started.

As far as using flash for animation, check out this website: http://www.rvanim.com/ If you have a good connection, I suggest watching the trailers on his web page. On a different forum, he was asked what programs he uses to which he replied "i use Flash for the colors and the little animation, after effect for the Fx (rain, thunder, blur...) and Premiere for the assembling, sound editing!" I asked him how he was scanning in his paper drawings and he said with Adobe Streamline.

Now, I've been fooling around with ToonBoom (which is pretty much the same as Flash) and found that it's scanning of drawings works pretty well if you have the dpi high enough. I would upload and example but my image host is down (figures).

But hopefully this shows what can be done in flash.

KalEl118

You're asking two questions: one is about drawings per second and one is about frame rate. Yes, full animation can be on twos @ 24 fps.

Ok thanks.

I suggest you buy "The Animators Survival Guide" by Richard Williams. It will give you a huge explination on how frames work and how the animate properly using them.

Also while you are at it get "The Illusion of Life" if you can spare the cash. It was writen by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's master animators.

Stribs, to save you alittle bit of time and drawings, you can shot your animation on "two's." Basicaly every drawing is shot for 2 frames instead of every frame being a new drawing which is called "one's." You can get really good animation with out all those drawings. It's called "limited" or "planned" animaton. This is the type of animation the Hanna Barbera did. Think the Flintstones. Characters get into a pose and hold it, while they talk. Now you just hold the body, and have to just animate new heads and mouthes. This saves time and money, and thats why a lot of TV animation is done in this fashion.

Flash can work as a good pencil tester. You import your scans and time out your frames. If something is to fast or too slow, at or subtract frames accordingly. Once you get the timeing the way you like, you can then draw the frames you need to and import those into your timeline. You can export several different types of movie files including swfs, avi's and Quicktimes.

Aloha,
the Ape

check out MonkeyJam for a free pencil tester. If you draw on paper, you can set up MonkeyJam pretty simply to test pencil drawings. The trick is to use "rough" drawings for your initial work--don't spend much time on anything but shape, gesture, and timing. If it works, add detail and clean it up.

If you're good at drawing in the computer, Flash is a great pencil tester, but there are cheaper solutions out there.

Richard Williams book is a must have, as mentioned by LK. Also check out Lightfoot Ltd for a complete selection of hardware and software solutions, as well as a great selection of books.

Stribs, to save you alittle bit of time and drawings, you can shot your animation on "two's." Basicaly every drawing is shot for 2 frames instead of every frame being a new drawing which is called "one's." You can get really good animation with out all those drawings. It's called "limited" or "planned" animaton. This is the type of animation the Hanna Barbera did. Think the Flintstones. Characters get into a pose and hold it, while they talk. Now you just hold the body, and have to just animate new heads and mouthes. This saves time and money, and thats why a lot of TV animation is done in this fashion.

Question:
Can't you do full animation on two's? Or for full animation does it all have to be 24 fps?

i am not a professioanl by any means, in fact I am still waiting to hear back on whether I got into Ringling or not. My advice though is start off learning to draw with a good ol' pencil and paper. If you like it and you feel like it is something you would like to continue doing then invest in something like a tablet or even just a scanner, just don't go buy a bunch of stuff because people tell you it will help you be a better animator because this may just be a drawing fad you are going through. Being able to animate or even draw with a pencil is the first step. All the fancy equipment in the world won't make you a better animator. A computer is just another tool an animator uses. You will find that animating isn't as "fun" as it looks. Don't get me wrong because It can be very fun, in fact it is a lot of fun, but it is also a lot of work for what some may see as very little result. The real pay off comes after you watch your drawings come to life and watch how other people react to it. I don't mean to discourage you at all, in fact I would encourage you to draw as much as you can each and every day. Read books about animation and do the lessons in them. Learn from them and learn from your own mistakes and accomplishments. Experience will be your best teacher. Having books and inforamation already wrtitten down for you will save you a few decades of trial and error. Stand on the shoulders of giants like Issac Newton. If you start drawing and animating and you love it, then go for it balls to the wall, or even if it is just a hobby, get as good at it as you can. I wish you the best from one beginner to another.

Question:
Can't you do full animation on two's? Or for full animation does it all have to be 24 fps?

You're asking two questions: one is about drawings per second and one is about frame rate. Yes, full animation can be on twos @ 24 fps.
If, as in a software, your frame rate is 12 fps your stuff will look like it's on two
but at 12 fps with faster motion with drawings widely spaced in timing will look more ...well like they're missing details in the action. So you need the advantge to put things on ones
I use twos @ 24 fps for my flash stuff even if it is limited animation...at least my flying graphics can have some pop if they move fast. In my brief flash for broadcast experience they used a rate of 24 and put things on twos so it didn't look like perfect moving cut-outs.

I don't understand a need for 30 fps other than to accomodate a video editor. My eye doesn't pick up all the details of ones at that rate and 12 drawings per 24 frames works fine and "drawing" 15 per 30 frames ...well it's 3 more drawings on twos you'd have to do if you were drawing.

Okay I actually am a professional, and I'll give you my opinion.

All the questions you have are sort of techie questions, that often don't get directly answered in many books. At least, not where you'd think they would. Most books like Animators Survival Kit make assumptions that you know things like frame rate. It's not meant to be that way, it's just that those are sort of introductory principles that seasoned animators forget to mention. If you're interested in learning animation and you're just begining to understand, I'd suggest reading (and doing the exercises) in these books, in teh following order:

Cartoon Animation - Preston Blair
The Animator's Workbook - Tony White
Timing for Animation - Harold Whitaker, John Halas
The Animator's Survival Kit - Richard Williams
Animation from Script to Screen - Shamus Culhane

then when you have the basic mechanics of animation down I'd read

The Illusion of LIfe - Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
Acting for Animators - Ed Hooks
Producing independant 2d Character Animation - Mark Simon

There are a few others, but I think that those books will get you up and running, especially if you actually do all the exercises in them.

Make sure you practice drawing. Enroll in a life drawing class. Nothing is more frusterating than to watch someone try to animate but they struggle trying to draw. I can't understand how you can focus on animation when you are fighting your own art.

Some great books on learning to draw:

How to draw comics the marvel way - Lee & Buscema
(the new) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards
The Natural Way to Draw - Kimon Nicolaides
Bridgeman's Guide to Drawing from Life - Bridgman
Any of the Burne Hogarth books

Those would be good intro books. the Edwards and Nicolaides books are good for helping you understand how to see and think when approaching your craft.

Anyway, hope this helps.

As for flash; full animation and pencil tests can be acheived but there are better programs to accomadate full animation. Flash's killer app are the symbols and vector animation. If one thinks Flash will give them a commercial advantge for full animation, they're shooting themselves in the foot.

[QUOTE=Stribs].........., how can you fit 20 frames into a second, do you practically copy the drawing from before and move it millimetre differently????

..QUOTE]

(SOrry to type again. DOn't want to monopolise.)
One's charcater doesn't have to be constantly moving at 24 fps or even 12 drawings per sec....There are these things called holds.

Yes Stribs, this malarky is hard. And yes you can import sound and audio into Flash.

aloha,
the Ape