I recently delved into the world of hand-drawn comics-style animation, after a lifetime of just sketching on paper. While I have a long experience with video editing, I had no experience with video animation of that kind. When I first got the idea to do the video it felt like a mountain to me, excessively complex. But the steep learning curve got easier with time. This is my top-5 cheat list to get you up and running.
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2010-03-08
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Yes I'd like to watch this but I don't have flash installed here, is there a youtube link?
It's been interesting following Eugenia's path into the realm of creativity and I'm looking forward to seeing this venture into animation (something I've always been interested in myself).
Member since:2006-05-18
You may want to check this out: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashvideoreplacer/
Replaces inline flash video with native inline video.
Member since:2005-06-28
There's a Youtube link, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr9a8MZFDLk&hd=1
Also, if you go to its vimeo page, it can also play via HTML5, but the embedded version doesn't.
Member since:2006-01-24
Thanks for the link, I just saw it and I liked it (liked the music too). Very much 'inspired' as far as character designs go but really it's amazing what a single person can accomplish in this day an age with the help of computers while combining their own work with that gratiously being offered for free by others.
I'd love to see a more technical in-depth article of the ways the computer can increase productivity/speed of creation by using stuff like the mentioned automatic in-betweening.
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2006-05-18
I've been following some nice tutorials by this dude: http://www.youtube.com/user/SaveAsAwesome/videos
He uses Adobe Flash for the animations and also Sony Vegas for putting it all together. I think Flash is a better tool for animation than Photoshop.
Member since:2006-05-30
There are a few really good tools out there. Of them, the Moho "continuation" product is really worth looking at (though it is now unfortunately called "Anime Studio", which gives the wrong impression completely.) It is a really simple to use vector based animation suite, and the kinds of things that take countless hours using Eugenia's techniques, actually take next to no time in AnimeStudio. It runs on Windows and Mac and is really reasonably priced. The older version worked on BeOS - maybe even Linux. It's really worth looking at. You get a lot of the more complex aspects of animation for free, or at a really rapid rate. I can't rate it enough. Amazing software.
Member since:2006-01-09
Agreed. Moho had a "skeletor tracking" feature that worked in a similar way to most 3D packages rigging tools: you draw your (vector) character, then define a basic skeletor and then "attach" each part of the character to the corresponding skeletor piece. Then it was just a matter of defining keyframes by changing the skeletor on different points of the timeline and Moho takes care of the tweening. I know that Flash may have similar features but Moho was (IMHO) better suited for classic animation.
The results may look somewhat stiff when compared to a carefully drawn frame by frame animation done on something like Toon Boom in the same way that some modern cartoons look "odd" compared to classic Chuck Jones and Tex Avery stuff but it makes it a whole lot easier and look quite good for today's animation standards.
Eugenia,
Loved your hand drawn characters. They kind of resemble Seth MacFarlane's characters in a lot of ways. And I remember that I loved your Vision you showed here on OSNews a few years back. Have you done or considered doing any web comics? I'd love to check it out if you did.
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2010-08-06
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2006-01-06
Based on what I've read about the creation of conventional animated 2D content, a lot of what you've outlined is the way that things have worked in that industry for a long time. There are artists who specialize in creating background landscapes, and artists who specialize in character animation. You used to see the animators flipping through frame content drawn on transparent cells back in the day; now, you see them drawing the characters into layers with Wacom digitizers in specialized tools. Economics is definitely a factor. Look at any cartoon nowadays; you'll see a lot of static backgrounds -- or slowly panning static backgrounds -- while the characters in the foreground change. There simply isn't enough time to do everything, unless you're working on a feature film; in which, the budgets are a lot larger. Nice summary. 
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2010-10-27
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Her website is still http://eugenia.queru.com/
Member since:
2005-11-11
There is a FOSS tool dedicated to hand-drawn animation, called "Synfig". They've been around for quite a while and it appears to be under active development. I have no idea how good or suitable it is for specific tasks, as I don't draw much myself or even animate, but I was rather impressed when I saw it many moons ago.
It was not mentioned in the thread, so I thought I'd drop the link: http://www.synfig.org
Edit: I might have found their site through this very board, the "raison d'etre" on the top of the home page actually quotes "OSNews"
Edited 2012-04-23 23:19 UTC
Member since:2005-06-28
I know Synfig well (my husband and I had dinner with the developer once at our place too), but I don't have a Linux machine anymore (the laptop I had for Linux doesn't turn ON anymore), plus I wanted something that I can move fast-enough on Sony Vegas. I don't mind the extra work anyway, I just felt I had more control on Photoshop/Gimp.
Member since:2005-11-11
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2005-07-06