AuthorTopic: where to begin with animating?  (Read 1982 times)

Offline fxokz

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where to begin with animating?

on: August 13, 2014, 11:46:14 am
Im really curious on how to make gif files, because thats were 99.9% of the fun is haha. But i also need advice on animating sprites. Where is a good place to start? I use photoshop cs6. Is this what people use to animate? Do i do it frame by frame? Someone help me out

Offline yrizoud

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Re: where to begin with animating?

Reply #1 on: August 13, 2014, 12:18:53 pm
Most painting/animation programs represent the animation as a sequence of images of identical sizes (a frame). Depending on program, each frame has an individual duration (this one lasts 1/10s, this one lasts one full second, etc), or they enforce a single duration for each frame - in this case you duplicate a frame to make it 'last longer'.

Read up on traditional animation, as it has a lot of education material : This thread links the most well-known terms and books.
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=16571.msg150326#msg150326

What kind of things/subject do you want to learn animate ?
Tiny stuff like animated smileys ?
Larger action game sprites ? (from NES mario to metal slug?)
Even-larger fighter sprites (like street fighter - 100 pixel high and up)

For any "large" stuff, a principle is generally to get the "dynamic" and timing right, before pixelling any details : If the subject is very large you'll sketch and animate with the outline. If the subject is smaller (so the thickness of the outline is a problem, it's annoying to erase and clean lines every time you change something), you draw solid-colored shapes, until the animation plays right.

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: where to begin with animating?

Reply #2 on: August 13, 2014, 06:44:05 pm
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I use photoshop cs6. Is this what people use to animate?
I like Graphics Gale.

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Where is a good place to start?
Read about basic animation theory.
Do the bouncing ball test.

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Do i do it frame by frame?
I assume you mean, redraw each frame.
It really just depends.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1