Considerations for a Longer Form Animation

[cljfford]

I wonder if some animators can share thoughts with me as I embark on a new project. I have storyboards for a project- a story, with no intereaction- that will be maybe 7 minutes long. From what I can gather, I should make it as an AS3 project and then export it to video because HTML5 Canvas doesn't do scenes and cannot load or break apart movies into smaller parts. 

I recognize that my idea is too ambitious to put on one long timeline but, if I do break it apart into different FLA files, about how big do you let these get, until you create another one to load? Is it a best practice to make each scene, no matter how short, its own FLA? In my Flash past, I used to put all my scenes in one large FLA and sometimes made different backgrounds and characters, on one Flash-Scene's timeline, to create different 'scenes' in one Flash-Scene.

If I am just going to export to video, can I ignore file size considerations? Is it foolish to just think of the end product as video, as opposed to making a SWF? Any other considerations about using Animate for this purpose, that could save me from trouble I don't see now?

I'm basing this question off of this forum post, from user kdmemory, at: https://community.adobe.com/t5/forums/postpage/board-id/animate

Let me tell you first: You shouldn't be using Scenes. Instead develop your 'scenes'as seperate fla/swffiles and load/unload them as SWF into a lead FLA document.

There is a snippet in ActionScript => Load and Unload => Click to Load/Unload SWF or Image. For a more handcoded spproach with steeper learning curve you could look into the AS3 Classes Loaderand LoaderInfo. In my AS3 past the tutorials of RepublicOfCodehave often helped me to get on with more complex AS3 subjects. So there is an introductory tutorial on Using the AS3 Loader Class.

This approach gives you smaller file sizes, easier editing through smaller units and more flexibility in setting up/combining trainings from a pool of SWFs. 

The general disadvantages of Scenes are nicely summarized under How to work with scenes in Animate CC. See "Disadvantages of scenes".

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

I'm not an animator, but I have used Flash Pro and Animate for making videos.

File size doesn't matter when you're going to be exporting to video. When you make the video it gets compressed to a given data rate, and no matter how complicated the animation is, it will fit within that data rate.

If you do export to video that means you can use ActioScript 3.0 FLAs, and take advantage of all of Animate's features (including Stream synched audio, more filters, higher quality settings).

I believe there is still a 16,000 frame limit, but as you're only doing 7 minutes, even 30 fps would only be 12,600 frames. If you want to do 60 fps there are ways around the limitation. Of course, if you do one FLA per scene (which would give you more managable files), then each of those could have up to 16,000 frames.

If you're going to use the sound from the Animate timeline, make sure to have imported 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo WAV files, and in the publish settings make the audio be Raw, 44kHz.

In the library, set all bitmaps to be lossless, not JPEG. In frame 1 of the timeline, put this code into the Actions panel:

stage.quality = "16x16";

That'll do for now! Animators may have other suggestions.

[cljfford]

Thank you, Colin! I appreciate your advice.

[n. tilcheff]

Hi mate,

I will agree with everything that Colin said, possibly with the only exception of '16x16' quality which may further slow down the sluggish preview of Flash/Animate.

There is no problem with 600-700 Mb files, that are 4-5 minutes long.

I have made many 5 min. episodes as a single scene / single FLA file in CS6 and older.

I do not use Animate for real work yet as performance is worse, but have opened many of these large files to test and it has no problems opening and modifying them.

Use of Scenes is considered bad practice. Just do not use Scenes.

In a studio environment, where multiple animators work on the same episode/film, while someone else edits, each shot is its own FLA. 

If you're working on your project alone you do not need to do this.

Never work on the main Timeline!

Work at least one level deep, i.e. have everything nested inside a container, so that you can edit with ease.

If you want to avoid clutter in your timeline you just nest layers in layer folders. You can have hundreds of layers which you will collapse and 'disappear'. Just keep it organised, so that sections representing shots, do no mix with other sections.

You can put groups of shots into containers to not have everything in one timeline, if you prefer. But then you will have to be more careful with syncing.

Best approach most likely would be to still keep frame numbers synced throughout the film, i.e. if a section of 3 shots starts from frame 7327, have 7326 blank frames at the beginning of that timeline. 

I tend to always run frame counters if I need to go out of sync for whatever reason to not get lost.

I'll be happy to reply to any specific questions that you might have.

In the meantime, below are a bunch of articles that should help get you going.

In the first one I have tried to outline the process of TV/TV-style animation production in its entirety; the second one deals with less technical matters.

http://flash-powertools.com/workflow/

http://flash-powertools.com/organic-animation-and-cinematic-look/

http://flash-powertools.com/character-rigging-for-flash-animation/

And this is a sample movie template that will show you the kind of file structure I use to get my stuff under control:

http://flash-powertools.com/edapt-movie-template-free-download/

Good luck!

[cljfford]

 Much appreciated, n__tilcheff,

Thank you for those links! I will study them asap.

[n. tilcheff]

You're most welcome, mate!

One extremely important thing I forgot to mention is that you should never rely on Animate's auto-recovery.

Likely it will only be an annoyance and slow you down.

Instead, get into the habit of saving your file under a new name multiple times a day and always back everything up in the evening.

In this way if you experience file corruption you will be able to go back to a previous version without much loss.

Also if you preview by exporting SWFs, even if a file gets corrupt, you will be able to grab the things you drew in the last hour from the SWF either by decompiling it or just importing.

If you've made a few seconds of animation that you have lost due to a file corruption, but have a SWF, you can render the SWF to video via Swivel and then underlay to repeat over,  or import into a container to 'trace'.

Taking all precautions is very important when you work on a larger scale project.

[Colin Holgate]

On the point about "16x16", if you are frequently doing a test movie it might slow things down, but if you are exporting to video, then it doesn;'t matter how long it takes. You could do this:

//stage.quality = "16x16";

and only uncomment the line during the times you're exporting to video.

[cljfford]

Wow. I want to thank both of you two, again. Nick, I read through your "workflow" page and am really grateful for the wisdom you've passed on there. I spent a lot of time with Flash, in the past, but was never exposed to that kind of well-thought-out, professional workflow. I've got to wrap my head around it but am sure it will very useful! 

[n. tilcheff]

Thank you, Cljfford!

I'm not a prolific author and only write when I have something new to say. So what you will find on our site will be new information, not available in books and popular tutorials that regurgitate the same stuff to get clicks.

We started Flanimate Powertools with the intention to help improve the quality of Flash animation by giving it better tools and adding to the theoretical framework which is necessary in order to gain confidence as an art form.

Good luck with your animation project!