Character Creation
Creating a character is a work of art. Many animators use Flash
to create their characters for presentation. This is due to
Flash's ability to present the content over the web as well as
other presentation platforms. Flash also has many tools that aid
in character creation such as the use of symbols, ActionScript
and tweening.
Flash allows you to present your character creations in a
variety of media formats. The most popular medium is the
internet. This is logical because flash was originally designed
to present animations over the internet. However, flash
animations can also be distributed in self-contained files that
you can send to people via snail mail on CD or via email. Flash
animations can also be exported as QuickTime movies and put on
DVD or even broadcast on television. This saves having to
re-animate you character creations many times, in many different
programs, or going through difficult conversions.
Symbols in Flash make it easy to animate. Here's how they work.
First go through the character creation process of planning and
drawing your character. Then make each of the parts a symbol
(like a nested composition) and animate the symbols. If you need
to change a character's body, you can simply animate the
movement inside the symbol without affecting the position or
orientation of the symbol. This makes creating a character very
simple and keeps drawing to a minimum by reusing the work that
you have already done.
Flash is famous for its ability to tween. By telling the
computer where to start and stop the animation, Flash will do
everything in between. This saves hours upon hours for animators
because it frees them from drawing each frame and lets them
focus more on other aspects of animation, such as the story line
or the sound. This dramatically speeds up the character creation
process.
ActionScript (the Flash scripting language) provides truly
powerful animation capabilities. With ActionScript motion can be
determined dynamically. Like a ball that follows the mouse
pointer for example. In terms of character creation you could
animate your character completely through ActionScript or use a
combination of ActionScript and Tweening to accomplish the task
in dynamic ways.
Flash is the number one choice for character creation.
Animations are easily disseminated and characters and their body
parts can be reusable through the use of symbols through flash.
Finally, the process of animating is made easier through
tweening technology and ActionScript. Flash has many more
capabilities that make it great for character creation that are
not covered here. The character creation process is covered more
in detail in my article "making a cartoon baby".
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Making-a-Cartoon-Baby/484
9