Anatomy of an Animation

I've been waiting to sit down and finish this project for a few weeks.  Today was the day, but I wanted to share a few of the steps I took to get to the final animation.

I did a set of parts on my normal paper of choice, Stonehenge.  It's affordable and available.

Acrylic ink wash on top of a preliminary pencil sketch.  Daler-Rowney F W Acrylic Ink is the shizzle.

Followed by colored pencil, Prisma,  and a final splash of good ol' no. 2 pencil, Ticonderoga.

 Should have used two pieces of paper though.

In photoshop I digitally cut the page apart and created individual png files.  Why png?  It allows the object to have a transparent background.  Making the layering of objects much easier.

In flash, I assembled the pieces and parts to make them seem to be layered on the background.  Add a little motion tween and whallah.  Ok, it's not that easy for me.  I've gone through a bunch of tutorials on youtube.  There's a ton, but find something that works for you. Hexjibber has a bunch that worked well for me.


I tried to get through this one on memory and it took me little time to get the parts where they needed to be.  Getting them to float across the page was a nightmare.  I hit command z three thousand times.  But with some effort, this one is nearing completion.

I plan to add title/credits, audio, and maybe a storyline or two.