ToonToonz.com Presents: Charles Kaufman's Flash Cartooning Tips & Lessons
| Flash Animation Lesson Contents Part 1 -The Idea -The Drawing -Making the Animation You are here. Part 2: -Making the Animation (continued) Animating The Jumping Leg Animating the Shadow |
"The Jumping Butthead Part 2.
Go to Part 1: Click here
(Continued - Part 2. )
The second part of the lesson shows how I took the animation from being flat and boring to one with a bit more character and style.
Click here to see the First test animation of the Jumping Butthead
As you can see the animation is flat and needs a little more life in the jump.
E) I then decided to make some changes:
-Make the feet and legs flex;
-Have the body dip slightly before jumping;
-Make the shadow look more realistic and dynamic.
-I went to Library>New Symbol and named it "Leg Jump" and gave it the Property of a "Movie Clip".
-When that symbol's stage opened I added 3 layers (for the foot, legupper and leglower).
-Then I added Frames so there would be a total of 12.
Once that was done I started adding Keyframes in the method described in Lesson 3. Then I adjusted and moved them around until they were in the proper place with the correct tweening.
(Note that the Shoe layer has more keyframes. I did that to adjust the way the shoe moved as it went up and down.)
See Graphic 5, below.
By making the movie clip of the leg jumping up and down I had created a sub-animation to plug in anywhere into the main animation on the Stage.
So back at the Stage I made two layers (named: "leg/foot front" and "leg/foot front") and placed the "leg jump" animation I had just created.
See Graphic 6 at right >>>>
To get "leg jump" animation to run properly one must click on the first Keyframe of the "leg jump" animation then go to MODIFY > INSTANCE. In the window that opens up change the Behavior to "Graphic", the next item loop and and First: 1. (Note that you can change these last to other parameters.)
I did this for both "leg jump" layers.To make the animation more interesting, I made the following changes:
a) The Body: Instead of standing rigid, I made the body hunker down from frames 1-4,
(How would I make it even better?
-Stretch the body as it reaches the highest point of the jump and;
- When the feet land back on the ground, squish the body somewhat and make it go down below it's normal standing position and bounce back up.
b) The Legs: In frames 1-4 the legs go down and bend. From frames 4-8 the legs bend to form a straight line, frames 8-12 they go back to the normal position.
(How make it better? More bounce on the landing.)
c) The Feet: Instead of staying flat they tilt backward on the heel a bit through frame 4, then as the character flies in the air, the feet arch backwards.
(How make it better? More movement on the landing.)
d) The Shadow: From frames 1-4 the shadow gets a bit darker and larger as the character hunkers down. As he flies in the air, the shadow gets smaller and fades out...then gets larger and darker as he returns the ground.
To see a more detailed lesson on the making of the shadow animation:
click here.
Graphic 5: The Leg Jump. I made an animation of the leg and foot jumping up and down to use within the main "Scene 1". I could then re-use this animation in the main Scene.
click here.
H) Finished!
Compare the two animatons -
See the first Flash animation: Click here
See the finished Flash animation: Click here.
By adding a little emotion and flair to the way the a cartoon character moves one can turn something dull into some that is watchable...
The trick to good animation is to experiment with the movement and timing of actions and events.
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