Animation Evaluation

Animation has been one of my hobbies for a long time now and it has been something I have been interested in for a long time as well. I have wanted to try traditional cell animation like used in cartoons such as The Simpson's or King of the Hill but I have never had the means to do it. So I decided to look at computer animation instead. Flash, the program that I currently use, is fairly similar to cell animation because of the two main types of animation that are used within it, being of course frame by frame and tweaning; which can be done over multiple layers. However the difference being in flash is that the animator has his/her own timeline with key frames in it to create the animation in sync with whatever they are doing. You can also create special objects called 'Movie clips' which are symbols that contain their own animation and timeline data that can be played in sync with the normal timeline or can be commanded to play on the press of a button. These useful features have made it easier for companies to create small interactive adverts over the Internet or other media services such as Youtube.

I first became interested in computer animation when one of my old teachers gave me an animating package called 'Swift 4.0'. It was essentially a basic version of flash that could be used to export some fairly nifty bitmap and text effects into flash itself. Unfortunately animating anything complex like a cartoon character was near impossible due to the limited vector tools within the program however I was stuck with this package as I couldn't afford to buy Macromedia flash at the time.

As time went on I built up my knowledge of different animators renowned for there work in flash. My favourite flash animator has to be Adam Phillips, who has created professional standard animations entirely by himself using flash.

'Waterlollies by Adam Phillips'

I have also been heavily inspired by 'Weebl'. He is known for his creations such as 'Weebl & Bob' and 'Magical Trevor'. Weebl has adopted the clean, sharp style of Flash to create his simplistic and smooth animations. I have referenced heavily into his work with my own.

'some of my own work in the style of Weebl'

I also enjoy work from other flash animators such as 'The Super Flash Bros','EgoRaptor' and 'Jerry Jackson'.

Not so long ago I was fortunate to be given a free copy of Macromedia Flash 8 by my old school for work I had done for their website. At this point I purchased a tablet for my pc and ever since I have been creating animations for Youtube and Newgrounds.

Here are some examples of my work.

<-- A small game I'm currently making