A friend of mine who knows a bit more about Flash than I do has offered to help me out and show me how to make a cell animation that flows more smoothly than the one I had made already. Should have it figured out in the next couple of days.

First Cell Test

After messing around in Flash for a while, I decided that the easiest way to make what I want would be to just draw every frame within the animation with my graphics tablet.

This results in an appearance that is not really as crisp and vectory as I’d wanted.. it’s not really reminiscent of ink at all. It is an interesting effect, though, which I might be able to work with.

storyboardish

I just put this together in Photoshop, then realized it was way too detailed to be a storyboard. Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to post it here anyway for the sake of documentation!

Research: flash tutorials

I just wanted to post this here as an example of some of the tutorials I’ve been reading and watching online. There don’t really seem to be any that deal with cell animations, but I can at least gain more knowledge about Flash so that I can figure something out on my own. I do remember a few very basic points from when we made animations a few years ago on the first year of Visual Communication, but I definitely need a refresher course.

research: ink blots

These are just some examples of inkblot tests that I found on Google Images. There’s not a whole lot to say about them individually, but looking at them in side-by-side comparison, I can get an idea as to how I want the cell pattern of my animation to look.

Research: david o’reilly

http://www.davidoreilly.com/

I love David O’Reilly’s animations, especially these two.

The reason I wanted to post Please Say Something here is because O’Reilly made it specifically with the purpose of creating emotion with very crudely made or “basic” animation. I put “basic” in quotations, because to be honest, an animation like this is something I’d never be able to make.

Octocat is probably a better example of EXTREMELY simple techniques (up until the end), since it’s made to look like a little kid created it. The feeling I get from this one is definitely different to Please Say Something – it’s not contemplative, but rather frantic and on-edge – but it’s still very effective.

These were important to include in my research in this project because the idea of using simplistic animation and still being able to create a mood is something that I definitely need to look into, as making complex ones is definitely outside my knowledge.