Yesterday I downloaded a trial version of flash 8. After stuggling untill half one in the morning I managed to produce this:

http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scene14jz.swf

(Imageshack managed to messup the border)

Hardly the most beautiful thing in the world, but I think I've mastered the basics. Well, motion tweening at any rate.:p

Does anybody know of a good tutorials site? Preferably filled to the gills with tutorials that I can easily download, so that I can read them on my internet-free computer.

I always find these sites useful when using Flash…

Flash Kit: http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/
Kirupa: http://www.kirupa.com/developer/index.htm

I'd also suggest trying out a bit of ActionScript for animation, rather than using tweening. It saves a load on file size, plus it helps get to grips with how scripting in Flash works.

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

Yes, actionscripting is very usefull and doesn't need to be advance at all..

I havn't checked kirupa.com out yet which Sel posted, but I usually go to ActionScript.org (http://www.actionscript.org/) for tutorials and forum.

Good luck =)

I use the Flash Developer Center: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/

There's some sweet character design / animation tutorials in there.

Nice going, philby.

Actionscript remains a mystery to me, but I'm sure I'll work it out eventualy.

In the meantime I've done a little work on frame-by frame animation. Specificaly a simple 8 frame run cycle. It's still more than a little rough and it took a few hours.

http://img163.imageshack.us/my.php?image=run2ink4nn.swf

Practice makes perfect:p

Ahah! That's quite cool! Weird... disturbing... but cool :p

It's a great starting, man... the running looks good... i don't think i could make it better myself...

Although i'm not sure if you have the best FPS there. It seems a bit too slow. Splapp once suggested me to use 24 Frames per Second, cause it is somewhat close to the TV framerate. Since then, i've been doodling around with 25 FPS cause it's easier to calculate how many frames i'll need to make a second... :p

16 or 18 would actually be more than enough (16 should be easier to calculate with for all computer geeks out there) for most stuff.

It's running at 12 frames per-second.

24 next time I feel.:p

Whatever rate you use, never use Flash's standard 12fps. 18+fps is best.

It's running at 12 frames per-second.

24 next time I feel.:p
29.97, son.

29.97, son.

What's wrong with 30?

I suggest you put an n in that title, as the current one is giving me unpleasant images.

I suggest you put an n in that title, as the current one is giving me unpleasant images.

Hah, I never even noticed the typo.

24fps is best for Flash. Trust me, any faster and it chugs along like a fanny in your internet browser.

24fps is best for Flash. Trust me, any faster and it chugs along like a fanny in your internet browser.

Here I was about to announce my love for 120 fps =(

120 is awesome, but lets see you make a frame-by-frame animation with that many frames.

Rather nice go, Philby. Just animate it all the way through. Don't make it go back and forth like a crazy dancing.

And as for tutorials, there's always the forums of flashkit.
http://board.flashkit.com/board/index.php
Searching around there can find me many things.

And of course, how could I not whore out my own tutorial? :p
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21372627/

And I'll also whore out GROR, too, just to say that if you ever start out in actionscript-land, I recommend making something like this, because it's damn simple. (Apart from that bungie core. Took me a while to get right, that did.)
http://www.deviantart.com/view/28362661/

lol! Crazy physics there pigbuster.
That bungie thing reminded me that I made a very simple drawLine flash. (for learning purposes)

Anyone interested:
http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload4/drawLine.zip

(To edit or look at the cube codes, open the cubes in the Library and check their frame)

The actuall line drawing code is on the main timeline on frame 2.

Ah yes, drawLine. Learn that one function properly and suddenly you can do three times as much with Flash.

Here are some Flash things I made. If anyone wants to poke around the .FLA files, just ask. I can't promise they're all neat code, because I made most of them while I was stil learning how to work Flash, but here they are anyway:

The Holy Mog Racer (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/mogracer) -- Mario Kart style "Mode 7" graphics in Flash. There are a couple of similar things that try to map a bitmap to the ground with varying degrees of success, but I prefer my way.
The "Planet ****" menu sketch (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/planetarse) -- a 3D spinning sphere. Slightly buggy but quite impressive, I think.
The Dalek Game 2D (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/dalekgame) -- a block pushing puzzle game. Uses drawLine but once, for the ray gun.
"24 Handy Diagrams" Tron (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/24tron) -- a version of Tron with a slight twist, made for my brother's site (see the TV thread)
The Boats Game (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/boats) -- proof of concept. There's no advanced Flash in there, but I like it.
Play With A Lightsabre (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/lightsabre) -- A simple drawLine demonstration.
The W4M Avatar Factory (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/avatarfactory) -- which is nothing special.

Wow, some really cool stuff there. The mog races baffles me :eek:

Once you get the hang of tweening, you can do some pretty nice stuff with it. Frame-by-frame gives a much nicer and less rigid animation (if done correctly), but it's much more time consuming. And as i'm a lazy tart I tend to tween a lot of my animations for the most, and only add frame by frame where necessary.

This (http://media.putfile.com/Frank-head) animation i'm working on at the moment is entirely tweening, apart from the stick man's leg animation, the beer splashes, the lip syncing and the bit where he gets sucked into the trumpet. (When you watch it there'll be a brief pause after the walking bit for the next scene to load) Bear in mind that it's still early days, so there's all sorts missing, like the majority of the first scene. And for those wondering WHAT THE HELL is going on... it's a Flash about weird dreams. :p

Anyways, Philby, I can always give you a bit of help with stuff if you be needing it, just give me a shout. Also, if anyone can do an Australian accent better than me (surely that's all of you), then also give me a shout!

Nice games there, Andrew, i specially liked the mog and the boat... nice concept there, surely grabbed my attention. :)

The furthest i ever went in ActionScripting was this: [link] (http://error404.foo.com.br/temp/minimoose/). It might seem a bit crappy, but oh well...it was my first attempt at ASing and since i've never read a single tutorial, i guess that worths something. :rolleyes:

And lol splapp, that's bloody awesome... i can't wait to see the whole thing... :)

I tried to make Randall stop in the center like your moose did, but he just ended up spazzing out and going faster and faster.
I think that I'm going to make a sequel to Randall, which will practice screen scrolling; something I've been trying to get right for a while.

And if we're going to show our actionscript magic, that thing I posted a while ago is mine.
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=28677
I should really get to work on that again.

And here's something else I never finished. I'll just put it up now.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8359/playtime0sk.swf

And here's something else I never finished. I'll just put it up now.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8359/playtime0sk.swf

That's really cool =)
Perhaps switch some of the sound effects so that the soft and hard hit's have the soft and hard sounds and not mixed? Anyway, you should try to finnish that one.

Afraid I haven't got much to show for Flash work. I've been working on my dynamic flash website, and that thing is a b**** to code. A B****!

http://supsuper.10e.net/

You know what's so special about it? All that data isn't in the Flash, but in a mySQL database. Take THAT, people that keep complaining Flash websites are a pain to update. :p

http://img228.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scetch9sl.swf

I think I'm getting better now.

That's pretty damn good for the first few tries.

I have to agree.

I have to agree.
Hell yea!

I guess you have a natural feeling for animating, man...consider yourself lucky... :p

p.s.: i'm here drooling at your new avatar, Sup... absolutely coolness.. :D

Okay, the paint bucket tool is seriously getting on my wick now. It worked before, so why won't it work now? I had no problem using it on my first animation.

All I want to do is put some fills between the lines I made with the paintbrush. Can it be that hard? Is there some setting somewhere that turns the paint bucket tool on? Cause all I can do is change the colour of the lines I've already drawn, and even then it only works on half of them.

Any Ideas as to what the hell is wrong with this thing?

There's a paint bucket and an ink bucket. The former is for areas and the latter is for lines. I assume you're using the wrong one. The lines it won't work on are probably on locked layers or in groups.

I've been using the paint bucket, unless the ink bucket shares the same icon.:p

none of the layers are locked, but I'll have a go at ungrouping everything.

Maybe you have a small gap between the lineart that doesn't allow the bucket to aknowledge that filling as a "inside" of something. It happened to me before... worth to take a look at... :)

That happened a couple of times when I coloured my first animation,where a tiny gap wasn't recognized despite the 'fill gaps' setting being cranked right up , but that wouldn't extend to every single area of every frame, unless I'm extraordinarily unlucky.

The animation I'm having rtouble with is the turning animation, as seen here:

http://img92.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scetch7th.swf

I've been using the paint bucket, unless the ink bucket shares the same icon.:p
Well, it's pretty similar, and you said it was changing the colour of lines. If it quacks like a duck...

The paint bucket tool can be annoying. I generally draw all my lines too long in Flash then trim them afterwards. That whole atuomatically splitting lines where they cross thing in Flash is wonderful for that.

This has been bugging me for a while. Could someone add an N to this thread's title? I know for a fact that Philby is not learing Flash.

Do you know about the onionskin feature? It makes transparent traces of the frames before and after the current ones, so you don't have to switch back and forth betwheen frames looking for where the last line was.

Yes I do. It is indeed very handy.

Yeah the Onion Skin feature does wonders for frame-by-frame animation, but making a character turn is pretty hard in terms of animation, so most Flash users avoid it. :p

Personal quirk of mine is that I don't like using the pencil or brush tools for drawing, I'd rather use the Line tool to have complete control over the thing. If I use the Brush it's a real bother to fix mistakes since I have to erase an redraw, and if I use the Pencil the lines never come out the way I want. It also makes for better morphing.

The pen tool annoys me, I can't seem to ter the damn thing right. It's nowhere near as good as the pen tool in photoshop.

On a positve note, I've managed to get the paintbucket working. I apeased the gods of flash by selecting everything and using the 'Break down' option in the modify menu.:D

I don't know why I need to do this, but as it works I don't particularly care.

That's exactly the sort of thing they should have put in the help file.:p

On a positve note, I've managed to get the paintbucket working. I apeased the gods of flash by selecting everything and using the 'Break down' option in the modify menu.:D Well 'break apart' breaks everything back to shapes (no more groups), so maybe you were trying to edit stuff in groups from outside (double-click them to edit them).
Either that or your grouping created "unclosed" spaces, since the paintbucket won't work if you use it in an "unclosed" space, and grouped stuff is separate from the rest.

You are very talented my friend. My hats off to you.

Keep it up.

Thanks, that means a lot to me.:)

Still no sign off that missing n I see.

http://img431.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scetch0yo.swf

If you haven't guessed already I've decided to jump right in at the deep end and make a flash cartoon. That way I'll prettymuch have to learn some basic actionscript, even if it is only for the preloader and replay button.:-/

As you can see I've got a bout 4 seconds of useable animation so far.:p

Ohhh, colour. Move up to shading and I'll worship you for years to come. :p

And making a preloader / replay button is possibly the easiest actionscript you'll ever learn.