From traditional animation and software animation to flash animation

Flash Animation

Broadly speaking, all moving images can be regarded as "animations". But in the case of film practitioners, animation refers to the production of a film. Originally there is no so-called traditional animation, since the computer image software intrusion animation production industry and stir up chaos, people will be the computer image software before the production of animation called "Traditional animation."

For the film industry, no matter what feature film, documentaries, Ko, are using the camera to capture the film on film at a speed of 24 or more per second, and then play it at 24 a second, using people's visual aberration to make people see the scene on the screen. The difference between the cartoons is that the subjects were photographed one by one, and after each shot, the object was moved. And the way it plays is the same.

The general cartoon practitioners, speaking of the traditional animation production, always inseparable from a piece of painting drawings, and then a lattice of the drawings taken down. Their artistic attainments were all reflected in the drawing of a picture. But in addition to this kind of a drawing out of the drawing, there should be other ways of performance, such as toys and puppets placed in front of the camera, each shot a piece of film, the toys and puppets move, and then continue to shoot the next grid. This can be said to be a variant of the cartoon, also known as puppet film. For example, the use of Chinese folk craft paper-cut, the characters and scenery cut, and then placed in front of the camera, and then a grid shot, a bit of moving, some people call it a paper-cut cartoon, in fact, is a cartoon.

Since the creation of computer graphics software, the animation process has been disturbed. The computer software not only can make the image, also can call the image to move up, produced the image, also has the three dimensional two dimensions the cent. Now the American film made of three-dimensional image software can completely put aside the way in which the puppet pieces of the past were made. In American movies, the dinosaurs, animals and plants and the strange dough, simply can not use the way to make the puppet piece to achieve. They can use three-dimensional image software to reproduce the former rely on make-up artist carefully make-up of the strange dough, can also use three-dimensional image software imitation lifelike toy people and puppets, when these software works appear on the screen, people can not use the word "animation" to describe, fortunately, Americans do not use the word "animation", they say this is called "cartoon ”。

If we use three-dimensional image software to make the film and the American works a higher, then our two-dimensional animated film I am afraid that there is not much market, fortunately, our two-dimensional animation film market still exists. Two-dimensional animation software has many, but the most popular in the civil is to calculate the flash. People don't really want to make animations, many of them are for Web pages, and many are for work, they make ads and courseware, and more are the novice who pours in for a while. Anyway, Falsh has become the most popular animation software. As far as flash itself is concerned, it does have the cost of invading the animation industry, especially its scripting language, which is not easily overlooked. Do not assume that there is any gradient function to solve the problem. The dinosaurs in American movies are not only flattened by a few graphic gradients. There is no command to let those quirky characters move on their own. This is the flash and other two-dimensional image software compared with its own features. By heart, the people who are engaged in Flash are not so much the one who really wants to control the animated characters with instructions, which requires a deeper excavation of the flash. Perhaps unfortunately, many accomplished people have upgraded to C + + or VB or something. Indeed, the huge game market does not need flash, perhaps this is why flash games are mostly small games, and flash people, there are many will not be programmed.

So what is the advantage of using Flash to do animation? If not with the movie, then probably really not much benefit, anyway two-dimensional image software Many, no Flash also line. But if you want to use Flash in the animation of the movie industry, that's another thing. Of course, flash can not alone, it must work with other image software, in order to play a greater role. However, in two-dimensional animation, Flash can still use the advantage of scripting language to play its special performance.

Let's leave the puppet pieces aside, because they rely more on three-dimensional image software. But if you want to get a like "pig eat Watermelon" a class of paper-cut cartoons, Flash can definitely solve the problem. Here is not just in the Flash file each frame inside, the various components to move, this is simply not with the traditional paper-cut cartoons not much different. This is to use scripting language to organize the components, using scripting language to mobilize these groups of components, so as to show the effect of animation. At this point on the screen, it will be different from the traditional paper-cut cartoons, but the work done after the screen is very different. Here is a small example, this is a flash animation, but absolutely no use of frame-by-step method, even the gradient is not, with the scripting language, it can imitate the action of paper-cut cartoons. If you can sum up a more efficient approach, it can become an animation template to be widely used.

When it comes to cartoons, no one can ignore the Japanese-style cartoons of the red pole in China. Japanese-style cartoons inside the characters, said to belong to a simple category, but they are unique to a lattice of cartoon character modelling, it is really popular do not know how many young people. Japanese-style cartoon characters can be completely produced with two-dimensional image software. Flash, of course, is no exception, and because Flash has the advantage of scripting language, you can do better in character action.

In general animation production, the characters face activity is a difficult point, the general two-dimensional image software can rely on the shape of the gradient to solve some of the problems, the general animation character design, in addition to the face of the front, at least to design a character face to the other 8 direction of the swing. If the front face is the 5th portrait, then there will be 9 people in total, their position is:

1-2-3
|\|/|
4-5-6
|/|\|
7-8-9

In hand-drawn work, the more portraits the more of course the better, but the greater the workload. With two-dimensional image software, it is generally possible to make a shape gradient between any two adjacent figures. For example, to make a shape gradient between the 1th portrait and the 5th portrait, or to make a shape gradient between the 2nd portrait and the 5th portrait, but not to allow the 5th portrait to move toward a point between the 1th portrait and the 2nd portrait, this practice must depend on the script language of the Flash. Here is a flash small example, which is a scripting language, the performance is a cartoon character's face to both sides swinging and looking up at the state. This example is just a simple note that the number of different angles that can be achieved is limited to 1 to 6, so that the trick can form a template, and of course there's a lot of detail to be done.

　　Let's look at the next Flash small example. This is an eye, we can let the eye follow the face of the swing and move up, the point is that in the process of swinging the eye can still do a variety of independent movements, such as blinking eyes, or close your eyes, but also to show the appearance of smiling. All of this is done by the instructions we give, which is more troublesome in hand-drawn work, even the use of ordinary two-dimensional image software is also a bit of thought, but with scripting language, the problem is not difficult, since we can call the role in the game to lift their feet, we can of course in the animation to call them smiling.

Another flash small example, is the performance of a cartoon character chatter to the people around, as long as we give instructions, it will have to close their mouths. Imagine, in the absence of scripting language two-dimensional image software, how to achieve this effect? This is why, in two-dimensional image software works that do not use scripting languages, the role of speech is often just to move the mouth, with two cheeks and chin not moving.

Whether it's a two-dimensional animation or a three-dimensional animation, making hair is always a very time-consuming work, here also give a flash small example, this example of hair, is not drawn out, I am afraid that no one has the mind to draw this lock with the wind hair, that is, the use of shape gradient is also difficult to solve. But with the script language of Flash, you can make a similar template, such as components, put together a few, the hair came out, of course, according to the painter's mind, design a different style of hair template, it is not easy, but as long as the template, the use of people more convenient.

The above examples, are in the flash inside the scripting language, but may not be suitable for flash animation, because in the general use of these methods on the computer, it is likely to make a large number of computer resources occupied, but for the professional units with the computing center, should not be a problem. Moreover, the current people engaged in flash, there are not many traditional animation production experience, in turn, it can be said that there are traditional animation production experience in the crowd, there is not much use of programming language experience, both seem to be using a leg in the walk. People with traditional cartoon work experience, if you have mastered the general two-dimensional image software operation, will certainly feel that the work is much easier; but if the people who engage in flash and have programming experience, can use their own advantages, for those traditional cartoon workers to provide a large number of similar templates like the animation of new techniques, then the combination of the two, Will certainly make the cartoon production industry doubled.
Perhaps the most unfortunate of all is the Macromedia Company's single-minded release of Flash as a tool to assist in the production of web animations, without further developing it into a tool for making real cartoons. Perhaps this is the reason, so that the current people engaged in Flash, really committed to the production of cartoons is not too much. The function of flash itself, if you want to be in the animation industry, it still needs a lot of ascension.