Animate a falling Cherry

[RuffyDragonGarp]

So I asked the same Question some time ago, the solution did help me search in the right direction, but I was still not able to solve my problem.

But thanks to that, I now can narrow my Question down to its root.

I want to animate a falling Cherry (but still being on the center of the screen. No actual movement on the Y axis).

Now I only want for the two Cherry's to move in a natural way (falling animation) but still being stuck to the cherry stalk.

After watching some tutorials I figured that tweening might be a solution. Jet I can't use it because my Illustrator Cherry is only one Piece (one Layer).

I've got some Ideas on how to solve my Problem but I don't know how to do them or if they are possible to do with that.

With Illustrator I can select some of the cherry's anchor points to move it but in Animate I can't, or I haven't figured it out.

So I figured maybe I can save my Illustrator file as a multiple Layer Picture and have the cherry's and cherry stalk separated.

The Problem with that is that I would eliminate the connectivity of the cherry stalk and the cherry's and that would make the animation unnatural or more unnatural.

I am new to Illustrator and have completely no knowledge on Animate/Flash. I know some Photoshop, but thats it.

But I tried watching some tutorial but none matched my actual search/question.

Help would be really appreciated

Thanks in Advance.

[Joseph Labrecque]

You have a few options. Look at IK/Bones for natural physical animation with spring/damping. You could also use the new asset warp tool. Either mechanism can be used on a single vector shape from Illustrator.

[RuffyDragonGarp]

I'll try it tomorrow. Thank you for the fast reply.

[kdmemory · Accepted solution]

Hi RuffyDragonGarp

When you are new to Illustrator and have absolutely no knowledge of Animate (please don't call it Flash any more, that's history), then you should first learn the basics in Animate (Import of assets, timeline, library, symbols, instances, stage, tweening, shapes, tools etc.). And you should start playing around, trying to build something with not too much pressure to a particular task. Without the basics you'd just be lost.

In Illustrator, well, it sounds like you have a little knowledge, though improvement is always good here as well. When  you say, your Illustrator Cherry is only one Piece (one Layer) that doesn't mean it is only one shape or element. In Illustrator one layer can contain hundreds of elements. I suppose you do want to colorize your cherries before you import them to Animate, or are you leaving them white?

Once in Animate, imported either in AI or SVG format, your cherries/stalks/leave will be a graphic symbol. Essentially there are graphic, movieclip and button symbols in Animate. However what you're saying that you can't select some of the cherry's anchor points to move them in Animate is not true. You can break apart a graphic symbol and then you have a shape (or several shapes). And then with the Subselection Tool you can pick anchor points and move, add, delete ​and more. You have also an animation technique called Shape tweening (besides Motion Tween and Classic Tween and Frame-by-Frame Animation). You have to try out a lot.

What JosephLabrecque mentions before about Inverse Kinetics/Bones and Asset Warp Tool is interesting, yes, though I would start with the basic stuff first. But it's all up to you.

To make any object look like it is falling without moving it on the Y-axis, you would need some kind of infinitive upwards movement in the background. Will your cherries hit the ground at some point or do the fall for ever? Think about whether you want some realistic impression (sky, clouds, grass, cherry tree) or you go more for a surreal approach like Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?

🙂 Klaus