Animation Lessons - FLAPPING OUR WINGS

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Animation Lessons :: Lessons :: Introduction to Lessons :: FLAPPING OUR WINGS

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Topic: FLAPPING OUR WINGS (Read 187 times)

Huronna
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FLAPPING OUR WINGS
« Thread Started on Oct 18, 2008, 11:00am »

At the conclusion of the previous lesson we had our wings flapping on transparent. If you look, you can see that they move smoothly from wide open to closed, but then snap from completely closed to completely open. That is not at all butterflylike behavior. This is where we step in. Before that, though, I want to show you really bad butterfly behavior.
[image]

I'm showing you this in case you have an overwhelming urge to compress things. This is caused by not having the wings in the center of the frame. The effect compresses equally from the left and from the right, so you must have the image you want to compress centered. We didn't have that problem because I centered the butterfly on the tube and we added pixels equally to both sides.

Okie dokie...we have our 'good' butterfly sitting on the Animation Shop work area. Go to Edit/Select all and click it. Click the copy icon and right click the work area. Choose Paste as a New Animation. At this point you have two animations exactly the same. With the copy one active, go to Edit/Select All......go to Animation/Reverse Frames and click it.

Notice that frame 1 of the reversed strip is the same as frame 7 of the original strip.
[image]

With the reversed frame strip activated, .....click the cut icon.....click frame 7 of the original strip......click the Paste after Current icon.
[image]

The 7 reversed frames that you cut will attach to the 7 original frames. Frames 7 and 8 are the same and frames 14 and 1 are the same. So click frame 14 to highlight it and click the cut icon......click frame 8 and click the cut icon. Click the View Animation icon to check it's movement now. Woo hoo! What a smooth butterfly we have.
[image]

I want to take time now to have you save this smooth moving butterfly from PSP, so that you can use it in the future. If you save it from AS, it will be optimized and while that changes it to a more compact animation, because it is on transparent, it can also leave it with a case of optimizer creeping crud. Obviously, that is a trade-off. If you have something on transparent sitting on your AS work area and want to save it for the future, this is what you can do.

In AS, go to Edit/Select All and click.....go to the copy icon and click....now go to PSP.....right click the work area and choose Paste as New Image. All the frames will appear. If you look at the Layer Palette, you will see 12 frames on it. Go to File/Save As and click . A box will appear. See the screenshot below.
[image]

Find where you are going to save the butterfly, name it something you can find again, Paint Shop Pro Image should come up by default, click the options tab and choose PSP7 compatible if you haven't already done this, click ok. Click save. This is also what I do if I have to take a long break and don't want to chance losing my work up to then. Now back to Animation Shop.

Maximize your clouds background again. Click it....click the copy icon.....click the Paste After Current icon until you have the same number of frames as the butterfly animation. (mine is 12). Go to Edit/Select All and click. Scroll back to the first frame of both sets of frames. I usually overlap the strip that I am going to drag just a bit. That way I know it won't jump frames and mess up my drag. Put the cursor on the butterfly and drag it onto the background. When you have it where you want it, release the cursor.
[image]

Congratulations on a job well done!

You can save your butterfly on the clouds background if you want. Then you can post it on the message board. The credit for the butterfly is AL2 safe tubes.
[image]

**********************************************

We're still in Animation Shop for this next lesson.

Go back to where you have the clouds background saved and open a fresh image of it. Minimize it for now.

From the strip of butterfly frames, we need two. Click on frame 6....click the cut icon....then right click the work area and click Paste as a New Animation. Now click frame 1...click the cut icon...right click the work area and choose Paste as a New Animation. You can close out the other frames. We have these two frames...one wide open and one almost closed.
[image]

For each frame, go to Animation/Resize Animation and when the box open, set it for Percentage of Original and 30. You now have two small butterflies.

Click on the wide open frame...click the copy icon...right click the work area and Paste as a New Animation. Repeat the process with the closed butterfly. We now have two of each small butterfly..

Activate one of the wide butterflies....go to Animation/Rotate and set the Rotate box for Left and 90 as shown....click OK. Repeat with one of the closed butterflies.
[image]

You should have these four frames.
[image]

Activate the crop tool and crop the two butterflies which you rotated. See the screenshot. You can magnify it if you want.
[image]

This is what should be on the work area now.
[image]

We're going to export them to PSP one at a time to sharpen. Have one activated....go to the export frames to PSP icon (see the arrow in the screenshot) and click it. You will probably be taken to PSP by the program. If not, go there. Go to Adjust/Sharpness/Sharpen and click it. Now right click the blue bar at the top of the small butterfly frame and choose Update back to Animation Shop. Go back to Animation Shop....right click the top bar of the same small butterfly frame and choose Break Link with Exported Frames. Repeat with each of the butterfly frames.
[image]

Activate one of the butterfly frames...click the copy icon....click Paste After Current 19 times for a total of 20 frames. Repeat the procedure with each of the other butterfly frames and with the clouds background. I set my group of frames like the screenshot below.

On this screenshot I consider the top butterflies closed and the bottom butterflies open or wide.
[image]

Be sure you have the clouds background scrolled back to frame 1. Put your cursor on one of the wide half butterflies and drag it on to frame 1 of the clouds background. Then drag one of the closed half butterflies on to frame 2 near the same location as the butterfly is on the first frame. You will be putting one butterfly on each frame and you will alternate between an open butterfly and a closed butterfly.
[image]

When you finish the last frame, click the View Animation icon to see your butterfly flitting about. Woo hoo!
[image]

Now we're going to repeat the process of adding 1 butterfly to a frame and alternating between open and closed butterflies. Here are two frames from my finished strip. Notice on each there is one open and one closed butterfly. Note: there will be leftover butterflies when you finish. You can delete them.
[image]

When you finish the last frame, click on the View Animation icon and watch them flit about. Double woo hoo!
[image]

Although we didn't do it in this animation, we could have rotated a copy of the butterfly 30 degrees. It adds alot to the animation. We also could have rotated a copy of the cropped wide butterfly so it flew at an angle. Make the adjustments before exporting to sharpen.
[image]

Here's a screenshot of what those butterflies would look like. In PSP and AS, you can be a butterfly tamer.
[image]

You have accomplished alot.....but....we aren't through with this animation yet. go to the next lesson.

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