So let’s talk about stick-figure animation in Adobe Flash there are many methods to doing stick figure animation but I will be explaining the method that I use to animate my stick figures step 1 constructing the figure to draw the stick figures I use a tablet in my Opinion there’s no tablet that is the best a small cheap tablet is sufficient to draw stick figures but if you want a bigger drawing area and more features in a larger more expensive tablet or Cintiq monitor will give you that also using a mouse can work too if you can’t afford a Tablet I use the brush tool to draw my stick figures raise the brush size to the maximum size and zoom in Flash’s brushes do not change size when you zoom in so you have to make sure to be at the same zoom level every time you draw or Else the brush size will change with the maximum size brush you have the most control make sure that object drawing is turned on by hitting the J key or clicking here this ensures that the stick figures body parts are separate from each other allowing for easy manipulation once you’ve drawn your Figure select the head and turn it into a symbol by pressing f8 this makes it so you never have to draw the head again and you won’t have to worry about it changing size or shapes throughout the animation select the line tool and draw a line on a separate layer holding down Shift to mark the height of your stick figure as well as the waist level this gives you a guide to ensure that the stick figure is the same height and proportion throughout your animation step 2 main poses many animators do the straight ahead animating technique which involves drawing the first frame then Drawing the second frame then the third frame and so on I prefer the pose-to-pose method because it allows me to plan the whole movement ahead of time so I know how it will end before drawing every single drawing to make a new pose click f6 to create a copy of the frame Hold down Shift + ctrl D select the head and delete the rest I have set the button on my tablet pen to trigger the Delete key which makes the process much faster since my hand doesn’t have to reach onto the keyboard to hit delete turn on your onion skin here to see the Previous frame then you move the head to the next position and fill in the body then repeat the process with the rest of your main poses you can view your poses in order by hitting the period and comma keys step 3 space out the poses now your going to Space out the poses you can hit f5 to add frames or click and drag frames around I usually start by adding three frames per pose allowing me to add a single drawing in between each one later then adjust it so that when you play it the timing makes sense you might need to Add frames to make it slower or subtract frames to make it faster step 4 in between now it’s time to in between this means making a new frame in between two main poses turning on the onion skin and drawing the pose that fits in between the two poses be smart about it the In-between doesn’t always have to be the 50% mark between the two poses for example if a character is coming from a state of rest to a sudden movement the in-between may feel more realistic if drawing closer to the state of rest imitating and ease in you can also accomplish this by doing in-betweens Inside of in-betweens only in-betweening the drawing closer to the state of rest each time but in general you should draw your in-betweens at the midpoint between the two drawings also it is not necessary to draw a new drawing every time avoid it whenever possible because taking what is already drawn and Manipulating it will not only be easier but also smoother because it is the same drawing step 5 adjust as necessary then play back your animation and make any adjustments as needed if an area is too fast you might need to space out some frames with f5 and add an in-between or Two if it is too slow you can remove frames using shift f5 to make it faster and that is the basic process for stick-figure animation that I use in my videos first you construct the figure layout the main poses spaced out those poses do the in-betweens and adjust as Necessary so I hope this helped you and if it did please leave a like and continue to give me suggestions for future tutorials in the comments so thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video you Video Information
This video, titled ‘ALAN BECKER – Stick Figure Animation (revamped)’, was uploaded by AlanBeckerTutorials on 2016-03-25 22:33:55. It has garnered 8360891 views and 197518 likes. The duration of the video is 00:04:24 or 264 seconds.
I explain my personal workflow in making stick figure animations.
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