Foundation Flash Cartoon Animation by Tim Jones

362 Pages·2007·11.57 MB·English

Jones
Kelly
Foundation
Rosson
Wolfe Flash
FounDATIon
F
Cartoon Animation
l
In this book, you’ll learn: A
Also Available
How to analyze your animation project’s requirements to create a production Tim Jones
S
pipeline that fits your needs and budget
Barry J. Kelly
h
How to create sophisticated character libraries to optimize your animation output
How to use JSFL plug-ins and extensions to enhance your workflow Allan S. Rosson
How to animate traditionally as well as how to master tweens C David Wolfe
How to integrate Flash and After Effects for complex camera mechanics A
R
Foundation Flash Cartoon Animation
T
Flash has become the tool of choice for 2-D animators and producers alike. Whether
o
you’re creating animated sprites for an interactive game, producing a TV series for
prime time, or financing a feature film, you may be considering or already committed
o
to using Flash for your project. Like any tool, Flash must be used properly to achieve
the desired results.
n
The purpose of this book is to help you use Flash for character animation in the
most efficient manner and to know when to tap into other software packages to
achieve your goals. Covering all the major milestones in a typical character animation A
production—from storyboards to postproduction—this book details the major criteria
you must consider at each phase of production and how your use of Flash will impact, n
and be impacted by, the decisions you make. With chapters on everything from
creating a project plan, building sophisticated character libraries, storyboards and I
animatics, and setting up your FLA for animation to extending Flash with JSFL plug- m
ins, animating traditionally and with tweens, creating special effects, integrating Flash
and After Effects, and more, this book takes you step-by-step through the character A
animation process and provides best practices and case studies to help you take your
Flash animation to the next level. T
Whether you’re a seasoned animation professional or a rank beginner, this book has I
something for you. Complete with downloadable sample files, each chapter provides o
insight into a major phase of production, walks you through specific examples, and
gives you the source files to work with. If you are using Flash for your current and n
future character animation projects, this book is a must read.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-912-9 ShElVInG CATEGoRY
ISBN-10: 1-59059-912-8 Teaches you how to create professional-quality
1. FlASh
53999 character animation for broadband, TV, and film
uS $39.99 Details the use of Flash at every stage of the character animation pipeline
mac/PC compatible
Covers best practices and case studies on Flash
www.friendsofed.com
and After Effects workflow integration
9 781590 599129
this print for reference only—size & color not accurate spine = 0.838" 360 page count

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Foundation Flash Cartoon
Animation
Tim Jones
Barry J. Kelly
Allan S. Rosson
David Wolfe
9128FM.qxd 10/26/07 4:26 PM Page ii
Foundation Flash Cartoon Animation
Copyright © 2007 by Tim Jones, Barry J. Kelly, Allan S. Rosson, David Wolfe
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-59059-912-9
ISBN-10 (pbk): 159059-912-8
Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked
name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention
ofinfringement of the trademark.
Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013.
Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax [phone], e-mail [email protected],or visit www.springeronline.com.
For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2855 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 600, Berkeley, CA 94705.
Phone [phone], fax [phone], e-mail [email protected],or visit www.apress.com.
The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the
preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or
damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work.
The source code for this book is freely available to readers at www.friendsofed.comin the Downloads section.
Credits
Lead Editors Senior Production Editor
Chris Mills, Ben Renow-Clarke Laura Cheu
Technical Reviewer Compositor
Tiago Dias Dina Quan
Editorial Board Artist
Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, April Milne
Tony Campbell, Gary Cornell,
Jonathan Gennick, Jason Gilmore, Proofreader
Kevin Goff, Jonathan Hassell, Elizabeth Berry
Matthew Moodie, Joseph Ottinger,
Jeffrey Pepper, Ben Renow-Clarke, Indexer
Dominic Shakeshaft,Matt Wade, John Collin
Tom Welsh
Cover Illustrator
Project Manager Jerry Richardson
Kylie Johnston
Cover Image Designers
Copy Editor Tim Jones, Barry J. Kelly,
Heather Lang Allan S. Rosson, David Wolfe
Associate Production Director Interior and Cover Designer
Kari Brooks-Copony Kurt Krames
Manufacturing Director
Tom Debolski
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To my wife, Julie, for picking up all the slack while I worked
on this book. And for my daughter, Bea, who makes
all sacrifices seem worthwhile.
—Tim
To my parents, Richard and Denis Kelly, for their never-ending support, love,
and care. And for letting me stay up late
to watch more cartoons and scary movies.
—Barry
My portion of this book is dedicated to my Father, William Daniel Rosson
M.D., for being my first and best art teacher, for his ever-present
encouragement and support, and for setting me
on the path to success with an artistic career.
—Al
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CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
About the Technical Reviewer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Chapter 1 The Project Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2 Character Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 3 Storyboards and Animatics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Chapter 4 Setting Up Your FLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Chapter 5 Plug-ins and Extensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Chapter 6 Frame by Frame Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Chapter 7 Animating With Tweens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Chapter 8 Animation Special Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Chapter 9 Why Use After Effects? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Chapter 10 After Effects and Camera Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Chapter 11 Making Flash Not Look Like Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Chapter 12 Tips and Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
v
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CONTENTS
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
About the Technical Reviewer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Chapter 1 The Project Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Outline your goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What are you trying to accomplish? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Using Flash for delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Delivery as a SWF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
How a SWF works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
How SWFs affect your animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The size of your SWF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The playback of your SWF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Delivery as something other than a SWF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Using Flash for creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Flash library system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Compositing and editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Planning your Flash animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Script. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Storyboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Animatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Animation method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Animation efficiencies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Compositing and editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Postproduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
vii
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CONTENTS
Making your project plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Delivery specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Frame rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Aspect ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Schedule. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Storyboards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Animatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Compositing and editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Postproduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Sample schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 2 Character Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
An overview of the character library process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Size (and weight) are important. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Size recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Weight recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Converting lines to fills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Anose by any other name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Viewing angle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Creating new symbols during animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Creating the head comp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Mouth charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Creating a movable jaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Eye comps and lid charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
The rest of the head comp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Articulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Nonarticulated joints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Hand charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Putting it all together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 3 Storyboards and Animatics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Storyboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Drawing storyboards on paper (traditional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Acting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Drawing digitally. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Drawing directly into Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Animatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Acting in digital boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
viii