so I'm trying to learn flash and I find myself immensely frustrated. I just want to draw an animation out-right. draw each successive frame, choose how long those frame persist for, rinse and repeat. it's something that I've learned in fireworks very well, but flash is the animation program and has more options available to it. Thus far, however, I've found actually DRAWING in flash to be a complete and utter nightmare. no matter what settings I use, the pen/pencil tools always make whatever I draw look atrocious and erasing anything becomes a lesson in patience and frustration as it only seems to erase what it damn well pleases. As the most robust animation program in the adobe suite, I can't believe that it just can't do drawn animations all that well, so I'm assuming there's some option or setting that I simply am not using correctly.

I know how to use a pen tool from other adobe programs, and from what I've seen, if I want to animate flatly using vector shapes and alter each shape manually as I go along, I can do so easily enough and end up with something that looks a bit like Adventure Quest, which I find horrible. Instead, I just want to draw.

Is there a method to making just drawing on flash more tolerable or should I just work in fireworks to avoid having to murder several hundred babies?

That's the problem with Flash, everything drawn in it has a very distinct look which is a result of it being vector art. It will be very hard if not impossible to avoid that.
I haven't tried this myself, but I would suggest you sketch out your animation in Flash first to get the timing down, then copy each frame into Photoshop and redraw it

That's the problem with Flash, everything drawn in it has a very distinct look which is a result of it being vector art. It will be very hard if not impossible to avoid that.
I haven't tried this myself, but I would suggest you sketch out your animation in Flash first to get the timing down, then copy each frame into Photoshop and redraw itI'd rather just find a program that CAN do drawn animations.

I've just seen so many people use flash animation and heard so much about flash being so great and what have you that I find it hard to believe it would be so worthless for non-web animation. it seems like a great tool for websites, but I just don't understand how anyone can stomach making cartoons on it.... I was hoping I had a setting done wrong or something...

You're doing it wrong. Just use motion tweens for everything. Oh and use gradients for colors, that way your lighting looks super realistic.



Joking aside, it's still a great tool for practicing, just ignore the crappy quality and focus on your animation. Flash is pretty good for churning out a lot of work in a short time.

edit: You can do quality stuff on Flash, it just requires a time and effort, like everything else. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/310851

I'd rather just find a program that CAN do drawn animations.

Well ok.. It sounded like you had decided to work with Flash, so I was just trying to think of a way to work with Flash together with a better drawing program.

Tried Flip Book?
Flip Book (http://www.digicelinc.com/)

The nice thing about Flash though is that you can do some pretty neat things with it. Say you want to animate some birds in the background. You could draw one bird in a position, turn it into a movie-clip, then edit it to access it's own timeline and then create a flapping animation. Then back in your main timeline animate the movie-clip across the screen.

Scipts are also nice, if you want to have rain you could just attach a small actionscript to a raindrop graphic and have it fall down, move to the top of the screen when hitting the ground. :)

Well ok.. It sounded like you had decided to work with Flash, so I was just trying to think of a way to work with Flash together with a better drawing program.

Tried Flip Book?
Flip Book (http://www.digicelinc.com/)

The nice thing about Flash though is that you can do some pretty neat things with it. Say you want to animate some birds in the background. You could draw one bird in a position, turn it into a movie-clip, then edit it to access it's own timeline and then create a flapping animation. Then back in your main timeline animate the movie-clip across the screen.

Scipts are also nice, if you want to have rain you could just attach a small actionscript to a raindrop graphic and have it fall down, move to the top of the screen when hitting the ground. :)that's what I'm saying! flash does so many nice little things, I just find it hard to believe that it's so utterly worthless at hand-drawing. that's insanely frustrating!

anyway, might give flip book a shot. also might just get off my ass and learn 3DS Max for some 3D animation further down the road. I dunno. I'll figure out what I wanna do for animation through the summer, I just think I've pretty much conquered emoticons :rolleyes:

As Xinos said, Flash was never really designed as a serious drawing tool since it's vector-based, so you're never ever gonna get the same result as a pixel-based package. Most people will just do their drawings in Photoshop as usual and import them in (this can really cost performance though since you're forcing a vector tool to reproduce pixel-perfect graphics).

If you really do wanna get as much drawing out of Flash as possible, you'll pretty much have to adapt to the different style and make the best of it, but it can give great results if used properly. There's two routes:

- Vector route: Use lines, shapes, etc to draw what you want. After all everything's made out of basic shapes, right? :p Yeah it's not as "freeform", but it's a vector program so you'll get the most control out of it, you can bend shapes, curve lines, tweak points, etc. It also produces the best tweens.

- Brush route: Get the brush, turn down the smoothness way low (0 if you want) and draw at 400% or something, it makes the final result look much nicer (to compensate for turning down the smoothness). It's a vector program so the zoom level actually produces different results, take advantage of it. Forget the eraser, it's useless, just learn to undo and draw in short strokes.

You can even mix and match like using vectors for more static scenary stuff and brush for organic fluid stuff. Also Settings are your friend, there's plenty of options to tone down Flash's overly smoothing if you know where to find them. Finally, for gawd's sake, don't abuse gradients and tweens. :p

As Xinos said, Flash was never really designed as a serious drawing tool since it's vector-based, so you're never ever gonna get the same result as a pixel-based package. Most people will just do their drawings in Photoshop as usual and import them in (this can really cost performance though since you're forcing a vector tool to reproduce pixel-perfect graphics).

If you really do wanna get as much drawing out of Flash as possible, you'll pretty much have to adapt to the different style and make the best of it, but it can give great results if used properly. There's two routes:

- Vector route: Use lines, shapes, etc to draw what you want. After all everything's made out of basic shapes, right? :p Yeah it's not as "freeform", but it's a vector program so you'll get the most control out of it, you can bend shapes, curve lines, tweak points, etc. It also produces the best tweens.

- Brush route: Get the brush, turn down the smoothness way low (0 if you want) and draw at 400% or something, it makes the final result look much nicer (to compensate for turning down the smoothness). It's a vector program so the zoom level actually produces different results, take advantage of it. Forget the eraser, it's useless, just learn to undo and draw in short strokes.

You can even mix and match like using vectors for more static scenary stuff and brush for organic fluid stuff. Also Settings are your friend, there's plenty of options to tone down Flash's overly smoothing if you know where to find them. Finally, for gawd's sake, don't abuse gradients and tweens. :plol, so basically the only things I can do with flash are abuse its settings to finally turn it into something that's only mostly horrible at hand-drawn animation, or adapt one of a very few, specific styles that work. I think I'd rather just use a non-adobe program or adapt to fireworks' slightly less elegant animation capabilities.

Millions of Newgrounds users can't be wrong! :rolleyes:

I can't be arsed to read this thread properly, right, but if you open a new AS 3.0 file and draw things, you can add IK bones to make animating a lot easier. It's quite nifty. Might even work with imported png files but I doubt it and have never tried.

If I completely missed the point of this thread then, like, you know, ignore the post.

I can't be arsed to read this thread properly, right, but if you open a new AS 3.0 file and draw things, you can add IK bones to make animating a lot easier. It's quite nifty. Might even work with imported png files but I doubt it and have never tried.

If I completely missed the point of this thread then, like, you know, ignore the post.well you didnt' miss the point, but you did miss the resolution. I've pretty much decided that flash just isn't going to work for my purposes.

Flash works for ALL purposes. Flash is KING.

Also, Flash isn't all that great but it's pretty cool. I've always like Flash for art, as you know. My avatar (which is awesome) was done in Flash with a tablet.

Your avatar is awesome.

Also, Shmorky does amazingly smooth flash animation for Flash Tub on SomethingAwful, and it doesn't look terrible like AventureQuest or Eskimo Bob.

Your avatar is awesome.

Also, Shmorky does amazingly smooth flash animation for Flash Tub on SomethingAwful, and it doesn't look terrible like AventureQuest or Eskimo Bob.

Eskimo Bob is the best thing ever made in Flash :eek:

Yes. Eskimo Bob is purposely campy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_%28style%29), and its appeal is in its camp. I'm just using it to compare from an animation quality perspective.

While we're spouting examples, Egoraptor (http://egoraptor.newgrounds.com/), HappyHarry (http://happyharry.newgrounds.com/) and JohnnyUtah (http://johnnyutah.newgrounds.com/) are some of the best Flash animators on Newgrounds (whether you can take their sense of humour or not is another matter).

This guy right here (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/520604) is probably the best animator on newgrounds.

A lot of modern cartoon shows are animated in flash too, including the new MLP show that the internet is going gaga over.

I could give or take for modern cartoons done in Flash, most of the animation is nothing more than 2D figures put together with lame tweening.

I could give or take for modern cartoons done in Flash, most of the animation is nothing more than 2D figures put together with lame tweening.

As far as cheapo animaton techniques I'll take tweens over 90% of hana barbera's output.

I'm bumping this again because http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wakfu&aq=f

Yes it's from a french anime, but it's a fine example of good flash animation.

that IS quite good! wow!