Monday 9th December 2013

Walk Cycle Completion

Walk Cycle

So today I made it my goal to complete my walk cycle fully, so now the cat has facial features and I also redrew the shape of the head to make it appear more like a cat. To redraw the head and neck I used the onion skin tool again. 

This is what my cat now looks like. I don't intend to add colour to the cat and instead plan to keep it white. However if I have time once I have finished my animation I may consider add colour.

As you can probably notice there is a blue border around the cat, this is because I have also made the walk cycle a symbol so I can use it whenever I need to and it'll loop constantly when put into the time line of my animation. This particular symbol is a movie clip. There are two types of symbols I could use for my animation - graphic and movie clip. I chose to use a movie clip over a graphic as a graphic is only used for static images, whereas movie clips are like small little animations designed to loop is put on the timeline for long enough. To create a symbol you need to go to Modify and then select Convert to Symbol. Then a small window will open and you can select which type of symbol you wish to use.

Once you have finished the symbol will appear in the Library and then you'll be able to access it at any time and put it onto your stage whenever you need it.

So after selecting the first frame of the walk cycle and converted it into a movie clip I still need to add all of the other frames or otherwise the walk cycle will be incomplete. So all I needed to do was highlight all of the frames (excluding the first frame because it is already part of the movie clip). Once highlighted I right clicked and selected Copy Frames. Then I needed to double click on the image which was the symbol to get inside the movie clip and paste the frames onto the timeline (Right click on the frame and click Paste Frames).

The last objective I needed to complete to finish off my walk cycle was to again alter the frames in the move clip. I have been working at 13 fps during the walk cycle, however, I will not be able to work at 13 fps during my animation. I need to be working at 24/25 fps as this is industry standard. But I cannot just put the animation to 24 fps and just leave it because this will slightly alter my walk cycle. What will happen is that the walk cycle will turn out to be nearly two times faster than it is supposed to be. This is because when playing the movie the walk cycle will be playing nearly twice a second as 13 frames is now just over half a second.

So this is what I have done to fix the issue caused by putting the frames per second up. I have added a frame to each keyframe so now each image plays for two frames. However this now means the movie clip is now 26 frames instead of 24. It may seem like a problem but it will not actually make a difference as the cat is going to be on screen for much longer than one second. If the cat was only on screen for one second it would mean the animation would cut off the last two frames of the walk cycle but this won't be an issue for an animation longer than one second.

Scrolling Backgrounds

Adobe Flash Tutorial: Scrolling Background

So as I was finished with my walk cycle I then needed to learn how to make a scrolling background effect in Adobe Flash. After watching the above video I learned very quickly which is really good to know it's very easy. To make a scrolling background all you need to is have a background that is larger than your stage size.

Here's an explanation:

I am working at a stage size of 1280 pixels by 720 pixels (width x height). I want to use a side-scrolling background so that would mean I need a background with a width greater than 1280 pixels but the height would still need to be 720 pixels. For the purpose of explanation lets suppose I use an image of the ratio of 2560 x 720. I would need to then set a keyframe at a certain frame, for now I'll use frame 150 but in my animation I would need to set it at a specific frame because the background would need to match the speed of the cat.

This is my 2560 x 720 image.

The next part would be to right click on the timeline and select Create Classic Tween. Once the tween is set the background is then completed.

This is just a simplified version of how I intend to use my backgrounds. Just like it was explained in the online tutorial I will need to set different speeds for my background, midground and foreground to give a better effect. I will most likely also use a looping background which will mean that the background I use will need to be able to provide this effect.

Wednesday 4th December 2013

Walk Cycle Continued

I continued where I left off with my walk cycle and complete it. Though I still need to add the features and fix it up a little bit.

 This is my first attempt at a walk cycle for an animal and I'm quite happy with it to use in my animation. Like I just said, I do need to finish it completely by adding in the features but I will do that in the coming days. I will also need to fix up the way the animation is supposed to bounce. It's really not worked how I hoped as it seems to be very unnatural.

Another edit I should try an attempt is to try and make the animal look more like a cat rather than a dog. After looking at how my original drawing of a cat looks like compared to my animation it looks like it's just that I need to alter the size of the neck and possibly the shape of the head.

 From looking at the two together you can pretty much see I am right about the neck and head of my animation. Hopefully it won't be too hard to alter but it should be possible to accomplish without having to redo the entire animation.

Wednesday 27th November 2013

Walk Cycle

Today I began to work on my walk cycle for my cat. I decided that I should create the walk cycle first as I have never drawn a walk cycle for an animal and I need it to be able to create my animation. As it was my first time drawing a walk cycle for a cat I decided to use an already made animation as a reference.

Using this gif I began trying to make my cat animation. I have been finding it relatively difficult because I need to keep redrawing the legs and paws in the correct positions but the animation is coming together. I've been using the onion skin tool constantly as it allows me to know where the last frame was, this allows me to make sure that the legs and paws are moving. The only downside about my animation so far is that the animal resembles a dog more than a cat. I haven't added any features to the drawing yet so that may help but for now I'm going to get the walk cycle finished and worry about the details later.

This is how I have been drawing each frame of my animation. On the left is a still image of the already completed animation and on the right is my attempt. As you can see I have left out the facial features of my animation and this is because I felt that I should learn the walk cycle first. Once I have completed it I'll then edit it to fix any errors and also draw the features in correctly.

To get all the still images of the animation I just imported the gif file into the Flash library and it automatically cut the animation up into 13 images. I then set my FPS (Frames Per Second) to match the amount of images. The reason why I needed to have my animation at 13 FPS is because if it was at the standard 24/25 FPS the animation will need to play nearly twice per second and this will cause it to be faster than it should be. So leaving it at 13 FPS the animation will run once per second so it'll be at a normal pace.

This shows that the onion skin is being used as well as the FPS has been set at 13.

Wednesday 20th November 2013

Planning

Drawings

To begin with my planning I decided it would be best to first learn to draw a cat. I used a range of tutorials [link here] to help me understand the drawings and then managed to draw a few images in various poses. I needed to learn how to draw a cat before I could storyboard my idea as it would have been very difficult for me as I have never really been good at drawing cats.

These are the drawings I have made with the help of the drawing tutorials. These will help me not only for my storyboard but also for my animation. I can use these as templates when I need the cat in this position and it'll really help me.