Animation 1 curriculum overhaul and character design advice

[Tgibs2]

Hi Everyone. 

I'm grateful for the supportive community and their guidance. In our HS Animation 1 class, we tried a film approach where students collaborated on a story, storyboarded, and animated a scene. While they worked hard, the outcome may not have justified the time. We're pivoting to a video game project for next year to practice coding and create an interactive product, while maintaining all the story elements.

Which brings me to my humble request for advice. I'm in the middle of making some characters for teacher demo's. My background is in 3D game design, so still wrapping my head around 2D flash/animate characters. Just how flat do you make everything? For example, a detail like a belt? Check image I threw together for your convenience. I'm working on a front view currently. So instead of the belt just being horizontal, I want to indicate form by making the belt a little more round. Will this just make things more complicated on the turn around models?  Is is worth the extra effort figuring out the sides when the belt goes in front around to the back? I'm learning edap tools so I know they have a method for welding these objects together, but can my students figure that out? Thanks for the tips you experienced flash pro's can offer. Have a great one. Cheers everyone. 

[kglad]

background info: animate displays 2d objects in 3d space.

that said, trying to display a ~3d object by having a figure pirouette isn't (imo) worth the trouble with animate.  you can give some depth by using an oval for a belt as shown in your leftmost figure.

if you want to display 3d figures and use coding check unity 3d or other game engines.

[Tgibs2]

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, 3D modeling is it's own class, so we are trying to stick to just 2D graphics. No desire to make 3D objects. I just didn't know if it's taboo in 2D. Quick search for flash game characters, it appears like it's normal to give things a little curve. Just wanted to make sure I clarified my intentions and looking for pro's and con's of each style I guess. It seems like a bigger hassle for sure to do curves, because it's got to be mirror reflected majority and dealing with anchor points has been a challenge. 

[kglad]

again, for 2d objects in 3d space animate is a good choice.

[Tgibs2]

Is this what your refering to? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8H0rAHym0k . 

[kglad]

no.  

you misunderstand because i've apparently misled you.

just start over with any questions you have about animate.

[Tgibs2]

Will do. Thank you for your patience. My question is how flat do you make things on the flash character? I know this is a bit more "just your preference," but I'm more asking for what headaches can this cause later for things such as turn arounds and rigs, etc. How round or curved is too curved, and become a pain when doing for example, the side view of the character. Because it's quite hard when you go a direction, make all the symbols, find out it's wrong for rigging, then you have to redo it all. In 3D, if something looks wrong on the character, I can adjust the vertices and it's done. With 2D, I have to then go back and fix all the different turnarounds... Thanks again. 

[kglad]

the more curved, the closer to the viewer the object will seem, just as you would expect.  otherwise, just experiment with some tests.

[BioME]

I agree with the consensus that Animate is a cumbersome platform for producing 3D affects. You should consider if it's worth while for your application. However, I can give you a few tips that I use occasionally. One is to use linear and radial gradients. I provide an example with your belt, attached. Let me know if you need instructions.

Another is to use rate and size to create the illusion of depth of field. For instance, one of my animations showed blood cells flowing across the screen. I made the cells on the upper levels of the timeline large. These cells moved slowly from left to right. I made cells in the middle of the timeline smaller, and made them move faster.  Those in the lower levels were smaller yet, and they moved even more quickly.

Another method I've used is to embed shape tweens within a movie clip. For instance, I wanted to shift the view of an embryo from back to side. That meant I needed to tween the shape of the embryo because the outline from the back is different from the side. However, the orientation of the embryo also had to change. From the back the clearest view is vertical, where that rear end of the embryo is at the bottom. But from the side it's easiest to display a horizontal view, with the rear on the left side of the screen. So what I did was make an movie symbol that started with a vertical view of the embryo from the back. The I then tweened it to a side view of the embryo. However, the side view still displayed a vertical orientation. Then I returned to the timeline, created two keyframes with the object, defined the first keyframe as a classic tween, and rotated the instance of the object in the second keyframe 90 degrees. The effect was the embryo looked like it was morphing as it turned in space.

I hope that helps.   

[Tgibs2]

Thank you for the tips and the image. I will test out the gradients and see how it goes. Thank you for all the advice and the examples. 

[n. tilcheff]

Hi @Tgibs2 ,

I'd say: Embrace flatness!

This is what is easy to achieve and comes natural to Flash.

Going against the medium will only create complications.

When teaching inexperienced designers you face two sets of challenges at the same time:

- artistic

- technical

This is a bad enough combination - the students don't know both what to do and how to do it.

Setting meaningful constraints on both what and how and limiting their freedom of choice usually can lead to better outcomes as they can focus on a goal within a clear, narrower range.

The 'what'

Robots are very forgiving and designing one can be an excellent, well-received and inspiring task.

There is no uncanny valley with robot design. There is very little to worry about joints, since you can expose them and that is fine. Also almost anything goes in terms of proportions.

With robots it would be much easier to have functional designs with outlines, which solves problems with contrast against a background. 

Organic characters are way more challenging, both technically and artistically, which can often lead to disappointment, esp. at a young age.

The 'how'

As for turnarounds, things don't really need to always be perfectly aligned as long as the perception of the same character being shown from different angles is not broken. Look at model sheets from some Flash animated shows from the 2000s, like "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", "Powerpuff Girls" or "Samurai Jack" and you'll see.

Simple is always better.

If you need detail, cluster it in areas where it wouldn't get in the way of functionality.

While full turnarounds may sound like a 'must', in reality a 3/4 view is the most important, and in most cases we can get away with only that or a little variation with two more views - something very close to front and something that is an almost side view, but still a little 3/4, because full profiles look unpleasantly flat.

(People who have not done much life-drawing or properly studied anatomy have serious difficulty producing decently looking profile views of characters as they do not understand volume, construction and mechanics.)

Tasteful use of gradients is very rare. A good way to avoid awfully amateurish look is to ban gradient use.

It is also worth discussing color palettes, but I don't have a good recipe here. Some colleagues like to sample colors from existing shots in animated feature films, which carry the right mood.

Learning from other people's mistakes

Often it is very educational to look at bad examples.

Here is an excellent illustration of this, which I came across a few days ago.

Someone who is half-knowledgeable of the technical side of things, but very focused and hard-working is proudly presenting his cringy, sad, mediocre achievement. He has put countless hours developing to the minute details a bad, bland design, which should have been discarded as unappealing seconds after it had been sketched.

https://www.reddit.com/r/adobeanimate/comments/1bh2d74/an_overview_of_my_rig/

It is pitiful and painful to watch, but is good to show to students what not to do.

As teachers it is our duty to try and prevent them from making such obvious mistakes.