Flash Animation

Flash movies are great favorites of Web designers, as they can have moving pictures, games, and interactive displays on pages that download in a reasonable amount of time. But what is a flash player? It is a plug-in that helps your browser play flash movies. Anyone who has visited websites with games, cartoons or interactive activities all on the same web page has knowingly or unknowingly used flash.

You can do quite a few things with flash. A flash-built web page might have cool buttons, or menu bars that change as you make choices. It could let you play a game, or do a drawing. It is even possible to have fully interactive web pages that look more like video games than the web.

The use of flash is very common on company websites. Design and media companies in particular prefer the use of flash because they want to impress visitors. Many newspaper and magazine websites also use flash to make interactive maps of places that are in the news.

Flash is the program used by web designers to make the pages, games and special files – or 'movies' - that this program creates. The movies are added to web pages just like pictures or other extras, like Java. When the page is sent from a web server to a browser, the movie file is sent too. The flash player, a special program, reads these movie files and displays them properly inside the web pages.

Although not a standard part of the world wide web, ever since flash was launched in 1995 it has become the most common way to add cool extras to websites. Many computers are sold with the flash player already installed. In fact, over 97% of Internet users have already got flash on their computers.

Flash gets a new version at frequent intervals, and you may need the latest version of the flash player in order to see pages created using it.

As flash animations have reasonably small file sizes, larger and more complex animations can be put online and downloaded reasonably quickly. They can also have interactive ability built into them, which is extremely popular for online games and special effects on web pages. The problem with flash is that it can make sites hard to look at and slow to download if it used too frequently.

Animation Challenges in Drawing People Walking - Sequence Sketching

Drawing people is something that every animator better know how to do and not just stick figures either. Animators must be able to draw people doing all kinds of things such as riding a bike, playing a sport, driving a car, or even walking or jogging. In fact, nearly every animation that has people in it will have the characters walking. Before you can set this into the computer to get the animation working, you'll need to have drawings to put that into the CADCAM software to help you grid it out.

This means you will have to sketch your character, in different positions while they are walking. You'll need a new sketch for each point of contact such as a foot touching the ground as your anchor sketches and then a few sketches in between. Once you do this you can set the parameters, and the computer will do the rest. If you've ever studied people walking or just sat in a coffee shop and watched people walk by out the window, you will notice quite a few interesting things.

People will swing their arms a certain way, and then move laterally to go around an object, thus, drawing a couple holding hands, or someone walking a dog adds more complications to your animation. However, if you will keep in mind the need to draw your anchor sketches each time a foot hits the ground, or in the case of walking the dog a paw, you'll be able to make all this happen.

Remember when you have a dog walking with a human you now have six legs and six points of contact. A small dog will touch the ground many more times between each step of the human, sometimes at the same time and sometimes not. And you cannot cut corners by having them walking in lock step, it will not look real.

Drawing sequential sketches is a necessity of a good animator, and until you can do that it really doesn't matter how well you can run the software, because you can never make it in the business until you can do both. Please think of all this.

References:

"The Animator's Survival Kit; a Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators" by Richard Williams (director of animation "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), Published by Faber and Faber, New York; 2001. ISBN: 0-571-21268-9

And

"3D Graphics & Animation; from Starting Up to Standing Out," by Mark Giambruno; New Riders Publishing; Indianapolis, IN; 1997. ISBN: 1-56205-698-0

Animation in India - An Excellent Opportunity

Will India be the future of animation technologies? Could be and they may well be on their way. For someone who has these skills there it can mean a successful career and meaningful work. Plus it can save US Companies huge amounts of money and this means with lower budgets, the world will see more animation at a lower price.

In fact, in an article in Knowledge@Wharton the electronic newsletter for Wharton International Business School, there was an interesting article; "Frame by Frame, Indian Animators Move Up the Value Chain," which discussed films currently being created in Mumbai, India. The movies are created there, and licensed through companies here.

Many of the animated movies we see in the US in the future will be partially completed, or completely done and outsourced to animators in India. How big is the industry? Well, friends of Wharton in that country say it generates up to 500 million dollars per year now, and could easily double by 2012. This is huge news and great timing for those considering a career in the field. It is a huge growth industry.

Will this hurt US animation jobs in Los Angeles? Well, it certainly could on a temporary basis due to the recession, but there as more animation hits the scenes and with all the video game, simulation, and future social-networking-animation expected, there should be lots of jobs all over the world. Right now in their country they will have to work extremely hard just to keep up with demand. It takes a lot of work to train new animators, but luckily they have lots of people interested that they can train. Please consider all this.

How Flash Text Animation Can Help You

What is Flash Text Animation?

Flash text animation is exactly what it sounds like. On your web page, you turn plain text into text that is moving, full of colors and life. It looks even better than it sounds, trust me. Flash text animation is growing more and more popular, and graphic designers are finding that flash text animation gives web site a high-tech, glossy, more professional look.

Sure, you can have plain text on your site. But when your competition has flashing, animated, interesting text, viewers may like those sites better – which can be bad for business. In the world of the Internet, having page viewers is the key to success. You want people to come to your site, so you have to keep up with (and even outdo) the competition. Flash text animation is a great way to get your site looking professional, interesting, and lively.

How Flash Text Animation Can Help You

Flash text animation will make your site look more interesting graphically, giving it an overall well-done feel and professionalism. This will bring visitors back time and again, and help to draw in traffic for your site. The average Internet cruiser looks at twenty to forty different sites a day – having flash text animation on your site can help set you apart from the rest. You want visitors not only to come to your site, but also to remember your web site. This will bring in repeat visitors, which means more business for you and your site.

Flash text animation very simply looks good, and people want their web sites to look good. It makes your site a more lively and interesting piece of the Internet to visit, and will make you look like a professional web site designer. No one has to know how easy flash text animation can really be.

Flash Text Animation Programs

To be honest, designing your own flash text animation can be a very long and tedious process. You have to really know what you’re doing and go through a series of careful steps before you get any hint of animation to your text at all. Even very clever web site designers have trouble designing flash text animation.

And because it’s so hard, there are about a thousand programs you can get online to make the whole thing a lot easier. That’s one of the reasons the Internet is so great – it’s great for taking shortcuts. If carefully designing your text and spending hours and hours working with the bones of your web site doesn’t sound appealing, don’t worry – that doesn’t sound appealing to many people.

There are many free flash text animation programs that you can find online, and download for your own personal use. Using flash text animation programs is usually as simple as clicking some buttons and working your way through some pull-down menus. In a matter of minutes, you can add flash text animation to your site without a lot of hassle or even web site design. A simple search on the Internet will yield many different programs that you can try for free to create your own flash text animation.

Flash Text Animation

If it makes your site look better, if it’s easy to do, and if it means more traffic to your site, there’s no reason not to give it a try. Flash text animation will give your site a professional look that you and your visitors will enjoy.

Picking the Right 3D Animation Studio to Work With

Picking the right animation company for your project will determine the success and failure of your marketing effort! So...how do you ensure you are picking the right one? The following is my honest advice regarding this subject matter:

1. Let me first start by saying that some companies excel at certain genres and other companies at other genres. There are some - like mine - which specializes mainly in animated commercials, broadcast animation for documentaries, medical visualization, character design and architectural visualization. There are companies who specialize solely in special effects or architectural visualization work. The very first thing you do is to ensure that you find a company that best fits what you want to do. Find a company that has an extensive portfolio or one that has done something similar to what you have in mind. The first ensures an experienced company and the second gives you the confidence that they have done something similar before and can probably deliver the same to you.

2. Make sure that the company is using more in-house staff than freelancers. Many freelancers are unreliable and may disappear when the going gets tough. Ultimately the company is responsible for their conduct, but you would have wasted your time and perhaps missed a good opportunity to impress with your presentation or marketing campaign. So you stand to lose out even if you don't have to pay for the project ultimately.

3. Ask for milestones and deliverables. Understand what the company's pipeline is like. Any animation companies worth their salt would be able to tell you a pipeline and milestone delivery that sounds logical and reasonable. Click here if you missed my section on Working with an Animation Company to find out more.

4. Find a company that responds fast to emails and phone calls. If the company takes a long time to return mails and calls, chances are they are either too busy to respond, can't be bothered to respond or too disorganized to respond. Either way you should move on and look for the next vendor.

5. Find a company that has project managers or account managers in place. You want to speak to speak to marketing people who understand your marketing needs and not animators who think about cool special effects and nice animation.

6. After giving concise background information of your company and what you want to achieve, see how fast and pro-active the company is in coming back with a proposed solution and a quotation. See if the quotation makes sense and that the company can account for each of the service listed.

7. I would not advise going around for quotations because quite honestly every animation company may charge differently according to their staff strength, reputation, portfolios, whether they are using freelancers or perm staff, standard of work, etc. There are too many variables and it is akin to comparing the prices of cars of different makes. It won't be fair in this respect. Try to go for whichever company can possibly deliver what you need within your budget.

8. Lastly, always work with a company you feel comfortable with. Go with your gut feeling. If you don't feel good about the company, it means you don't have chemistry with the people there and chances are you won't enjoy the working relationship. This will affect the end product.

Media Arts and Animation Degree Online Program

What does Media Arts and Animation Degree Online Program have to Offer?

The presentation of any product is one of the key factors on which the sales ratio rely completely. Of course the product has to maintain the quality standards but other than that, to sell a product, it needs to be well presented. Apart from sales perspective, when it comes to entertainment, it's very important to make things look as real as possible on screen. For instance, a film is being shot and there is a stunt sequence in which the actor has to jump from a very tall building. Now in this sort of a scenario it's pretty likely that the actor will deny to shoot that scene (unless it's Tom Cruise) because of a lot of risks involved and the stunt sequence is also very necessary for the movie to progress. So instead of risking a human life, that stunt could be performed on a computer screen using a graphic designing software and thanks to so much of the hard work from the industry, its really not that hard to create stunts like that. Media Arts and Animation Design has traveled a long way. There were days when simple JPEGs and GIFs images were created on Corel Draw but now there are advance graphic designing software programs like 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photo-shop and Adobe Flash which creates high definition graphics. These software programs have unlimited possibilities and it all depends on the imagination and the creativity of the graphic designer that how he/she does that. The tools are there to create a perfect motion picture using nothing more than a computer system but it's very important to learn those tools first in order to be on the top of your game. For that matter, many top accredited online universities and top accredited online colleges are offering Media Arts and Animation Degree Online program. Media Arts and Animation Degree Online module is basically a branch of Visual Communication Degree programs. If you choose to get into any of the top accredited online university or top accredited online colleges to learn the art of animation and design then this degree could be the best option for you.

To learn animation and design, a lot of tolerance and skills are required. You might have to wait for months or years to gain the perfection you are trying to achieve but one thing's for sure that you will create that perfection. And after all, one of the benefits of getting into top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges is that you learn everything with perfection and are given ample amount of time to develop an understanding of all the given tools and software programs to achieve what you want. You will be working with software programs like Adobe Photo-shop, Adobe After Effects, and 3D Studio Max.

Course Outline

Some of the courses offered by top accredited online universities and top accredited online colleges in Media Arts and Animation Degree Online program are:

· 2D Animation

· 3D Character Animation

· Acting/Movement

· Advanced 2D Animation

· Advanced 3D Modeling

· Advanced 3D Textures

· Advanced Life Drawing/Gesture

· Advanced Modeling/Animation Topics

· Camera and Lighting Techniques

· Character and Object Animation

· Color Theory

· Digital Composition

· Digital Editing-- Video, Audio

· Digital Imaging for Multimedia and Web

· Digital Ink and Paint

· Drawing and Anatomy

· Fundamentals of Design

· Intermediate 2D Animation

· Introduction to Digital Composition

· Life Drawing and Gesture

· Portfolio Presentation for Animation

· Pre-Portfolio Presentation for Animation

· Pre-Production Team

· Storyboard Rendering for Animation

· Visual Indication

· Web Animation

Career Opportunities and Salary Info

Once after completing Media Arts and Animation Degree Online program of top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges, you would have to go for an internship after which you would be able to join a regular job. Internship could even be started before completing the degree program so this way you would be able to save some time. You could target jobs like Storyboard Artist, Texture Artist, Computer Modeler, Computer Generated Special Effects Artist, Creative Head, Media Consultant and a lot more. The salary depends on the sort of the job position you are on to and the experience. You would be able to earn around $80,000 or more per annum after successfully completing Media Arts and Animation Degree Online program from any of the top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges.

What You Really Should Know About 3D Animation and Animation Graphics

We have all seen animation and probably so much so that we have got to the point where we just take it for granted. If we have to stop and think about it, our explanation of it would be simply something that moves. Many of us would equate it to cartoons.

To become more technical what we are referring to is 2D or 3D animation. 3D being 3 dimensional by way of the order of the images be presented. Each movement is known as a frame. One frame very gradually moves onto the next and give us the illusion that the object is moving. The frames are then presented moving from one to the next very quickly.

To create this effect by hand or as we refer to the 2D was painstakingly consuming. The artist would have to draw a new picture each time the object moved in any way. Then all of these photos would be put together consecutively. These were called cell animation and hand drawn animation. Although it was detailed and a great deal of work, it was well respected by the true animator and received with pleasure by the viewer.

Cartoons have been based on 2Dimensional art for years. With the inception of the computer not long after came the capabilities for 3D. This does not mean that 2D still does not have its place of importance. Nor does it mean there is no skill involved. If one thinks that, an individual that who has no artistic basis can sit down and do 3D animation just by learning the software this is simply not the case.

To create 3D animation it requires the use of complex software. All of the characters are designed by way of the computer and hand drawing is not a consideration. It will progress through a series of steps before the project will be completed. The individual who is responsible for this project must have a thorough understanding of each and every step in order to reach the desired results.

There are many standard software programs that are used for 3D animation. There are several on the market. They all vary as to capabilities and complexity. If you have a real interest in this type of art, then you could start with a very basic program. As you, master the one move on up to the level. Remember though this does not replace the artistic eye. You need to be able to discern that the character looks perfect during every step of the way to becoming completed. If you are not able to critique your own work then you are not going to get good results. If you seem to have a knack for drawing but have had no training you may want to consider taking some art courses and at least learning the basics before you attempt 3D animation.

Finally, you should be aware that it is not just a matter of mastering the software. Large production companies have had their own software designed specifically for them. If you to approach these companies for a job then you would most certainly needs the basics as we have just outlined.