Yard work and zebras

Mark actually let me out of my edit room this weekend long enough to plant a garden and to help landscape the rental. But I did manage to get some animation done. Here's a taste of what the animation will look like once imported into Final Cut Pro.

12 frame walk cycle

Here's the zebra doing the full 12 frame walk. I realize it looks like he has a stick up his bum. :) I will work on that problem tomorrow.

Three frames in three hours

Here's the first three looped frames of the zebra walking. Only thousands more to do! And it only took me three hours to do the first three :(
*Note, this film may cause seizures.

Four-legged motion

I have been doing countless Flash tutorials, but all of them are of humans. So today, I found horse motion images on the web (http://nicholnl.wcp.muohio.edu/DingosBreakfastClub/BioMech/BioMechWalk1.html), then traced the outlines in Flash. So now I have a horse walking template. I will position my zebra legs to fit within the rough position of these outlines. There are 12 individual outlines within this animation.

Oh, and I also found another Flash tutorial site that offers character packs. I could buy a walking horse character, but the movements are a little too cheesy. I think I can make my zebra look better by using what I made in Flash. But if anyone wants to get 4-legged motion cycles, go to: http://www.cartoonsmart.com/four_leg_cycles.html

Goodnight!

Flash Animation Tutorial

I have been doing tutorials all day. Most of them have involved animating a very exciting circle. Here's one that's slightly more interesting.

Meet my zebra!

Well, it was user error that caused my problems with Flash, not a glitch. I accidently had a button selected. I still have no idea what that function was for. But I have successfully drawn my zebra and positioned the stripes in the right places so I can animate it. I am still a ways off from doing the actual animation. I think I am going back to my tutorials so I don't keep running into stupid problems. I skipped ahead to lesson 11 to draw the zebra and break it into parts.

Flash Frustrations

It's now 10:46 pm. I spent all day editing cutdowns of the strange days series. I can tell you right now... the last thing I wanted to do was more editing/animating. But I went ahead and came home and banged my head against Flash until now. I keep hitting a wall. I finally posted a message in the Creative Cow forum, but no one is getting back to me. Here's my problem:

I am using the trial version of flash. After a couple hours of using it, I can no longer use my drawing tools properly. Boxes keep appearing when I start to draw. Also when I select all of my drawing, many, many small boxes appear near the bottom. I am a little new to Flash...do I keep somehow hitting a hot key? If so, how do I turn it off? I have tried restarting, copying to another project, and repairing permissions. I keep having to start a new project and draw from scratch. This is the third night in a row, so is it me or a glitch? If it's me, please tell me how to turn off these boxes.


I guess I will go to bed and pray the Creative Cow Fairy will answer my question in the morning.