I've made one animation so far, I have made other characters for other animations as well, but a few things are bothering me. I would greatly appreciate any advice on any of these questions
Microphone: What should I be looking for in a microphone? Is there a certain brand I should look for? How much does a "good" microphone cost? for my first animation I was so excited just to make something that I used a "guitar hero" mic. It produced less than favorable results.
Sound recording software: For my first animation I used a program called audacity. I'm not sure if it is a good program or not partially due to the fact that my mic is so terrible that even the best program couldn't make it work. The question is, Is audacity a good program? or should I get something else
animation program: right now I'm using flash cs6 and for the most part I'm happy with it. However I would also like to try other animation software to see which fits my style best, and also I would just like to know how to use everything applicable to this type of career. The question is what other software can I use?
Bone tool: Possibly the most aggravating part so far. my first animation is pretty much two characters standing in place talking, only mouth movements. That is obviously not good, so I'm trying to learn how to add more motion to my animations but the bone tool is really giving me trouble. when I try to use the bone tool on my symbol different parts will get distorted. I tried converting each part into a symbol but when I tried to move the parts after the armature was made everything but the torso vanished. The question is, when using the bonetool should each part be a symbol? should everything be grouped together? If you know of a good tutorial I can find anywhere that would be greatly appreciated, or if you could give me a list of steps to take, honestly anything at all would be awesome.
So far those are my biggest issues I would like to thank everyone in advance for either taking the time to read this or for any help that may be offered.
Microphone: you want to get a condenser mic, preferably the cheapest one you can find. I got my mic from guitar center for $60.
Sound Recording: I use Audacity for all my recording and sound editing and I think it works great. And there are plenty of youtube tutorials on things like how to remove the white noise from the background of your recordings.
Animation Program: I am currently using Flash CS5 and except for all the random crashing it likes to do from time to time, it is currently my favorite animation program. I think Flash is a very powerful tool and highly underestimated. Toon Boom is also good, and more animation specific, but I hate Toon Boom's interface, so I just stick with flash.
Bone Tool: Don't ever use the bone tool. It's garbage. You'd be better off learning how to do cut out animation with nested symbols (tutorials can also be found on youtube and google)
Hope this helps you out:)
http://ben-reynolds.com
Animation and Design
Thank you so much. I'll be looking up a condenser mic soon, I also recently started toying around with just moving seperate symbols instead of fighting with the bone tool. I'll also look up that program I also found one called pivot, its just basic stick figures on pivot but still something fun to toy around with. I appreciate all of your help.
Glad I could help. :D
One easy way to do symbol based animation is to go to the transform tool and move the pivot points to where you want them to...um...pivot.
For example, if you have a leg with a symbol for the thigh and a symbol for the lower leg below the knee and they are on separate layers, you can move the pivot point on the lower leg symbol to where the knee would be. Then when you animate you just use motion tweening to rotate your lower leg symbol on that pivot.
http://ben-reynolds.com
Animation and Design