Animation: Most Popular Articles

Free Animation Programs
Want to try before you buy, or looking for something simple but functional with no strings attached? Here's a list of various animation software packages available for download. Some are entirely free, some are shareware, some are free with limited functions (with more available after paying), and some are free trials that either expire after time or come with certain critical options disabled.

Embedding an SWF in a Web Page
If you're publishing for the web, you'll need to be able to insert your SWF file into your website, right? Here's a quick guide that will help you figure out how.

Ask the Magic 8-Ball
Try out a version of the classic 'Magic 8-Ball' created using Flash ActionScripting.

Your First Animation
In this lesson we'll cover how to create a new blank movie file in Flash MX, and the tools and steps involved in making your first simple animation using motion tweening.

Flash Basic Walk Cycle
The walk cycle is one of the most important animation techniques to master, but you can simplify it a bit in Flash even when drawing each individual frame, whether in whole or in part. This basic stick-figure walk-cycle demonstrates the basic ideas and discusses key concepts of figures in motion.

Animated Flash Dropdown Menu
This is a simple, animated Flash menu that drops down/expands when your mouse rolls over the menu header.

Animation Lip-Synching
If you want to add actual expression and realistic mouth-movements to your animation, it helps to study how the shape of the mouth changes with each sound. These ten basic phoneme shapes can match almost any sound of speech, in varying degrees of expression--and with the in-between frames moving from one to the other, are remarkably accurate.

Flash Animation 5
In this lesson, we're going to learn how to "cheat' on making detailed animated characters in Flash without actually drawing every frame.

Quiz: What's Your Animation Speciality?
Quiz: What's Your Animation Speciality? Does your talent lie in creating realistic 3D textures, or in

The Flash "Screaming Maze" Prank
Collected here is a gallery of still shots and media files of a few examples of About.com Guide Adrien Sanders' computer animation work.

Building an Animated Character
Whether you draw your 2D animations traditionally or digitally, there are some skills essential to both incarnations of the craft. One is the ability to draw simple but effective animation characters with clean, easy lines and basic shapes.

Keyframe and In-Between Basics
Rather than working with simple shapes and reusable objects, let's work with the techniques used in cinematic animation: hand-drawing each frame using keyframing and in-betweening techniques to describe progressive motion.

Guide Review: Anime Studio 5
While Anime Studio 5 definitely isn't a program that you can dive in and start using without at least a passing knowledge of the fundamentals of animation, it still provides a rich, full-featured animation experience that simplifies the process and allows you to produce high quality animations for less effort.

Flash Animation 2
With this lesson, we'll pick up at the end of where we left off in Lesson 1, with a lesson on shape tweening in Flash MX. Shape tweening can take two different shapes at keyframes set any number of frames apart, and mathematically calculate the frames in between to produce a smooth animation depicting the transformation between one and the other.

Scripting a Simple Stop
The stop command is most likely the most basic of all of Flash's ActionScript commands, and the most essential. It's also a good place to get started with familiarizing yourself with the concepts of working with ActionScripting.

Flash Animation 3
Since the Fourth of July is coming up, let’s make a “Happy 4th” E-card, complete with animated fireworks. This will be a two-part lesson; the first will cover drawing the scene and creating the static fireworks, and the second will cover animating the fireworks bursting and adding animated text.

Flash Animation 17
It's time to take a bit of a leap in your Flash education by learning how to control movie clip timelines from within the main timeline. To do this we're going to use buttons to tell Flash when to play individual movie clip animations.

Essential Animation Supplies
If you're less of a digital animator and lean more towards the traditional, you've probably got a studio as cluttered as mine--and there are some supplies that you just can't live without.

Animated Thumbnail Gallery
Upgrade your static thumbnail gallery with Flash animations to make your thumbnails interactive, and keep all of your content contained on a single page.

Introduction
The term "computer animation" itself rather broadly covers a wide variety of genres and applications, though the simplest way to break it down is into the categories of 2D and 3D animation. The tutorials provided here have been grouped into the categories of 2D and 3D animation, before being subdivided by skill level to walk, step-by-step, through the basics of creating your own animations

Keeping Up With the Studios
Computer animation can be be fun, but it can also be quite costly. But it's not always necessary to spend that kind of money; for the curious, the studious, or even the aspiring professional, there are much more cost-effecitve ways to get your feet wet. If you know where to look and how to shop, it's not that hard to compete with the big boys without spending the big bucks.

Flash Lesson 8
This will be one of the easiest lessons yet; all we're going to do is add a looping audio background to our Flash character animation to complete it.

Creating a New Scene
Here we explore the concept of individual scenes in Flash, and how to create and manipulate them to make options to associate with our buttons.

The Walt Disney Company
Disney is no doubt one of the most famous names in the animation industry, known for providing entertainment directed to adults and children alike; with theme parks around the world and a world-class animation studio and business franchise, the company nearly dominates the industry.

Trace Bitmap
In case you missed when it was covered in Lesson 5, here's a quick tip on how to use the trace bitmap function in Flash to turn bitmap art into vector images.

Flash Animation 13
A Flash preloader is a short, low-key animation that plays while the rest of your animation is loading, and can either loop or show a growing progress percentage.

Flash Onion-Skinning
Frame-by-frame animation can be difficult when you're working on one frame at a time with no reference for the previous or next frames. Flash has a solution for this dilemma--known as onion-skinning, an option that you can turn on that shows a range of frames both before and after your current frame.

Animated Thumbnail Gallery II
This continuation on the lesson on animated Flash thumbnail galleries shows how to use movie clips to animate your content appearing and disappearing.

Flash Lesson 7
It's time to get our characters moving, using the movie clip symbols that we set up in previous lessons to control our limbs as a whole, and in sub-parts--and also to animate our facial features and give them expression and lip movements.

Publishing GIFs vs. SWFs
While Flash SWFs are considered one of the more advanced methods for publishing animated and streaming content to the web, there are times when using an animated GIF for smaller, shorter animations would be more to your advantage.

Flash: Determine Screen Size
One of the many functions of System.capabilities is to allow you to use ActionScripting to determine a user's screen resolution.

Quiz: What Type of Animation Do You Prefer?
Take this quiz to see what type of animated story suits you best.

3D Studio Max Lesson 1.1
In this set of tutorials, we'll just be taking a look at the environment of 3D Studio Max version 4.26, and helping you to get more familiar with the tool panels, how to navigate them, and how to use the sets of basic tools you'll need to begin animating.

Flip Boom Review
Flip Boom is a software package from Toon Boom designed to allow children to learn the basics of animation in a fun, friendly environment.

Animation Showcase Submission
Looking for somewhere to display your animations? Why not submit to the animation showcase?

Flash Animation 11
It's time to combine the buttons and scenes created in Lessons 9 and 10, using ActionScripting to tell Flash how to behave when our buttons are clicked.

10 Stupid Flash Tricks
Sometimes there are things that you can do in Flash that in truth, you really shouldn't--not unless you enjoy leaving your viewers in the throes of audiovisual agony.

Screaming Maze Flash Prank
You've been pranked by it, most likely--now learn how it was done, and turn the tables on your friends.

Flash Detailed Animation I
Creating a detailed, full-color character animation using traditional frame-by-frame methods is a long and at times difficult process, even in Flash. For this lesson we're going to take the first step and rough-sketch our basic motion for a simple action, using block shapes representing a character we wish to animate.

Flash Custom Mouse Cursor
Whether it bounces, jiggles, squiggles, wiggles, glitters, or just sits there looking pretty, you can turn it into your own custom Flash mouse cursor to replace the default.

Review: Toon Boom Studio 4
Toon Boom Studio 4 is a unique and advanced animation experience that brings your animations from the page to the PC.

Flash Hotspot Buttons
We've covered creating standard Flash buttons, but here's an expansion on that discussing how to make part of your scene clickable as a "hotspot" using invisible buttons.

Loop Playback
Turn on "Loop Playback" for continuous playback when previewing your Flash movies on the timeline.

2D Animation
2D animation is the creation of moving pictures in a two-dimensional environment, such as through "traditional" cel animation or in computerized animation software.

Motion Tweening: Rotation
In the we covered motion tweening as a basic "Point A to Point B" process but you can also use motion tweens to rotate your symbols.

Flash Animation 20
To start off simply, we're just going to create the foundation for a basic text menu with rollover links.

Flash Digital Clock
Create a digital clock--twenty-four-hour time or twelve-hour time--in Flash, using dynamic text properties and the hour, minute, and second parameters of the basic Date functions.

Flash Animated Dropdown Menu
Collected here is a gallery of still shots and media files of a few examples of About.com Guide Adrien Sanders' computer animation work.

Halloween Bobblehead
flash animation, flash animation tutorials, macromedia flash, flash animation lessons, flash actionscripting lessons, flash bobblehead, bobblehead doll, halloween doll, pumpkin doll, flash halloween fun, virtual bobblehead

Freelance Work: Pros and Cons
While working for yourself can be extremely rewarding and quite convenient, you should always be aware of the added responsibility and obligation implied, and of any hardships that you might encounter and will need to plan for. The points that I'll cover here are things that I've learned from my own experiences as a freelance artist, animator, designer, and writer; I hope that they'll help you as well.

Review: Toon Boom Digital Pro
Toon Boom Digital Pro eliminates the need for multiple software packages to create a richer, more in-depth animation experience where you can animate from start to finish within a single project.

Flash Animation 24
For this lesson we're going to integrate a little simple copy-paste Javascript into our ActionScripting--using thumbnail graphics as clickable buttons to open custom-sized popup windows containing HTML content, right from our Flash movie.

Royalty-Free Music Resources
Find links to the music and sound effects that you need for your animations - royalty-free and free for download.

Light Tables
Whether you're drawing 2D animation for cel painting or doing the preliminary pencil work to be scanned in for a computer animation, a light table is one of the most important tools for frame-by-frame animation that you'll ever own.

Flash Animation 4
Now that we’ve set the stage for our E-card, let’s go ahead and animate it. For the first part of that, we’re going to use a new kind of symbol called a Movie Clip.

Guide Review: The TAB Manga
The TAB Manga is a simplified animation program that may get the job done, but is it worth $200?

5 Cheap Mac Software Packages
Frustrated by the dearth of inexpensive animation solutions compatible with the robust and powerful Macintosh platform? Take a look at this list of five software packages that will let you animate for $250 or far less.

Review: Flash Professional 8
While Macromedia Flash 8 is a great program that continues the tradition of excellence begun by its previous incarnations, upgrading from Flash MX isn't really essential to continue animating and developing effectively.

Review: Toon Boom Studio 2.5
It's easy to see why Toon Boom Studio has been the choice of many major animation studios for their 2D animation and 2D special effects needs. With 3D scene planning, advanced drawing modes, automated lip sync mapping, dynamic cameras and effects, and integrated sound scrubbing, it's a complex and richly-featured tool ideal for serious animators; the software is a great advance in the animation field, while maintaining the familiar and comfortable feel of cel animation methods.

Flash MX Text Outlines
You don't need Flash 8 to create effects like drop shadows, outer glows, or stroked text. You can simulate these effects just using a little creative layering and fill effects in Flash MX and earlier versions.

Visual Basic ScreenSaver
This is just a quick dip at the trot, a basic checklist of things to do for those comfortable with Visual Basic; this isn't intended to be a full step-by-step, but more a basic overview as to the steps inherent in creating an easy 2D animated screen saver using the language.

Flash MX Outer Glow
You don't need Flash 8 to create effects like drop shadows, outer glows, or stroked text. You can simulate these effects just using a little creative layering and fill effects in Flash MX and earlier versions.

Flash Perspective Illusion
Flash proves that you don't need a 3D program or even a complex 2D program to create easy two-dimensional shapes with the appearance of three-dimensional depth.

Computer Animation Media Gallery
Collected here is a gallery of still shots and media files of a few examples of About.com Guide Adrien Sanders' computer animation work.

Flash Halloween Costume Dress-Up Doll II: Controls & Scripting
Collected here is a gallery of still shots and media files of a few examples of About.com Guide Adrien Sanders' computer animation work.

Motion Capture Technology
While there is, in fact, a great deal of work involved in realistic computer animation, there's less magic, mystery, and painstaking effort than you might think. Those unreal motions are, in fact, all too real, and are accomplished through the use of motion-capture technology. Many movies and video games make use of this technology to animate their digital models.

Review: Xara 3D 6.0
Xara 3D 6.0 is a great 3D animation program for beginners or those with simple needs for their animations and 3D designs.

You Prefer: Adult Animations
Take this quiz to see what type of animated story suits you best.

Basic Flash Password Protect
While you don't want to count on this for definite site or application security, you can use this basic password script as part of a game or any other fun animation.

Review: CrazyTalk 4.0
CrazyTalk 4.0 is a stunning revolution in making the creation of human interface animations as easy as the click of a button. It practically does all the work for you, and makes turning your photographs and artwork into a moving, talking cast of people so simple that you won't be able to put it down.

Creating Simple Buttons
For this lesson, we're just going to learn how to create a simple button that doesn't really do anything other than demonstrate a mouse-over effect, just for the sake of learning the steps. We'll also touch on action-scripting for the first time.

WMode Transparency
Ever wondered how they make those Flash ads that can be dynamically positioned anywhere on the screen, but that have a transparent background? In just four steps, I'll show you how.

Slingshot Game I
We’re going to create a game similar to those “punch the monkey” games that you’ve seen in ads—maybe even in ads on this site. However, this game will actually have a beginning and an end, instead of just opening an annoying popup window exhorting you to buy this or that. This lesson starts off by setting up the animations and some of the basic ActionScripting involved.

Why So Many Software Programs?
While at first glance it might seem that there are dozens of computer animation software packages that all do exactly the same thing, at a closer look that is very far from true. First, some computer animation software is designed specifically for 2D animation, while others are designed specifically for 3D animation; within those two categories, the various software packages can be further subdivided by purpose and functionality.

"On" Command ActionScripting
Moving from the most basic to the most common, the "On" command is the foundation of mouse-action-based user interactivity in Flash.

Easy Flash CrossFade Effect
Fade between one image and another using layers, alpha controls, and tweens.

Storyboarding
Using a storyboard will help you organize your animation, and match you mental visualizations of scenes with the written script. If you use a storyboard you'll find that you'll be able to plan your animations more cohesively with clear marker points to show progress, and you'll save yourself a lot of time and trouble when struggling to make the entire thing come together from beginning to end.

Drawing for Animation
Free drawing lessons with techniques for animators

Flash Animation 15
Let's pick up on the last lesson to add a bouncing sound effect to our squash and stretch animation, using Flash audio to bring more life and depth to the animation.

Ask the Magic 8-ball
Will you have a merry Christmas? Will 2007 be a good year? Will you get that promotion? Ask the magic 8-ball....or use Flash and Actionscripting to make your own.

Animation Character Sheet
Before you start animating, it's a good idea to draw up a character sheet/character breakdown of the subject of your animation, both for reference and to familiarize you with drawing different views. Let's take a look at the basics for a character sheet.

Review: Carrara 5
If you're patient and willing to learn, Eovia's Carrara 5 could be a great program for you to produce professional-quality 3D images and animations.

Produce a Portfolio
A printed portfolio of artwork and stills is also important, and can display talents that may not be so apparent in the digital medium. Here are a few guidelines to producing a professional portfolio that will reflect positively on you as an artist, animator, and potential employee.

Drawing in Flash w/a Tablet
If you've been working in Flash for any period of time, by now you've probably realized that mouse-drawing anything beyond a basic pre-defined shape can be pretty time-consuming, and pretty difficult, if not downright impossible (and maddening). I'd recommend getting a graphics tablet.

How Much Does Animation Pay?
Like any field, the pay scale for computer animation careers varies widely depending on your location, the company that you work for, your position with that company, and the specific industry that you work in; there is no concrete answer to this.

Flash Oekaki/Paint Application ver.1.1
Play with this fun, multi-featured, multi-skinned online paint application/oekaki app, learn how to create one of your own, or download the current version for easy installation on your own website.

Video Games vs. Movies
Creating animations for video games is much different from creating animations for movies. The major difference is that a movie is meant simply to be [i]viewed[/i], while the purpose of a video game is to [i]interact[/i]. For this reason, animating for video games can be much more difficult than animating for video games; however, this reason is only a broad generalization of the differences between the two genres.

Flash Animation 14
It's time to learn how to use Flash with classic animation techniques to portray gravity, weight, and squash and stretch. Just in time for the winter holidays, too--with a snowy scene and a bouncing snowball to demonstrate the techniques.

Easy Flash-Style Tooltips
Create your own customizable Flash rollover-style tooltip popups, using a simple two-frame movie clip and a little ActionScripting.

Flash Animation 16
We've learned how to play sounds at a certain time in a Flash animation, but what about in response to certain events? This lesson is a basic start on playing sounds on mouseovers and mouseclicks, using buttons to trigger those sounds.

Review: iClone by Reallusion
iClone reminds me a great deal of Bryce's Poser, but advanced to the next level. Even the newest beginning animator can dive right in and have fun tweaking the preset models to create and animate your own "digital you".

Flash MX Keyboard Shortcuts
When working in Flash, one thing that can make your life infinitely easier is a knowledge of keyboard shortcuts. You'd be surprised the amount of time that you can save simply by not having to stop mid-task to reach for the mouse to point and click to accomplish a task that can be completed just by the press of a combination of keys.

Flash Animation 21
Flash's getURL command lets you make a hyperlink out of any graphic or symbol.

Motion Tweening: Easing
Another way to control your Flash motion tweens is through an option called Easing.

Tabbed Content with swapDepths
Using swapDepths in Flash to change the depth of your tabbed content windows, you can create an intuitive and stylish content display with easy navigation.

So You Want to be a....
Anyone can seek out a career in computer animation, regardless of any measure of artistic talent; all that you need is to know what you want, and to be willing to put in the necessary effort to achieve it. This article gives a basic set of guidelines on where to start, and a little advice on how to pursue your chosen field.

Flash Animation 19
The startDrag and stopDrag commands help increase user interactivity with our Flash movies by letting them manipulate our movie clips with the click of a mouse.

Flash MX Effects: Drop Shadow
You don't need Flash 8 to create effects like drop shadows, outer glows, or stroked text. You can simulate these effects just using a little creative layering and fill effects in Flash MX and earlier versions.

Flash Animation 26
Since we've started using video in Flash, it stands to reason that we'd need video playback controls, as well. This lesson shows you how to add playback control buttons to turn your video display into your own simple media player.

Flash Tip: The Pen Tool
This overview will help you become more comfortable with Flash's pen tool and how to create different types of anchor points in paths.

3D Studio Max Lesson 1.4
The last set of tools that we’ll discuss as part of the standard 3D Studio Max interface is located at the bottom of the window, stretching along the width of the working area below the multiple views. These tools help control how you view your animation, your timeline, and how you view your scene.

Slingshot Game II
With the animations set up as the basis for the game, let's start to make it a little more user-interactive by adding the scripts that make the slingshot move with the mouse, and fire when clicked.

3D Studio Max Lesson 1.2
The second part of our first lesson in 3D Studio Max's tools will cover the bank of tabbed tool sets below the main toolbar. These tool sets allow quick and easy access to a large majority of 3D Studio Max's various objects and tools used to create, modify, and animate, and can be used as a shortcut to commonly-used buttons/tools found elsewhere.

Vector Animation
"Vector animation" is a term used to refer to animation whose art or motion is controlled by vectors rather than pixels.

AS: Challenge I Result
Play with this fun, multi-featured, multi-skinned online paint application/oekaki app, learn how to create one of your own, or download the current version for easy installation on your own website.

Paint App Deconstruction I
For the first installment in the series of lessons on deconstruction the oekaki/paint application, we're going to look at the basic setup, how to switch the skins out, how to change the canvas color, and how to create the help file.

Pixar
Based out of Emeryville, CA, Pixar is an award-winning animation studio famous for its computer-animated film shorts and for the feature films that it produces in conjunction with Disney, who splits costs of production and distribution by covering all distribution issues while Pixar handles production.

Easiest Flash PreLoader Ever
Well, it may not be the very easiest preloader on the face of the earth, but it's certainly easy enough that just about anyone could do it - requiring no hidden tricks, no special variables, no tricky little intricacies. Just three frames, two if statements, and one button, and you're on your way to a preloader that you can finish in ten minutes or less.

Flash Falling Snow
With Flash ActionScripting and a little math, you can simulate flecks of falling snow moving in a natural, random drift - whether you want slow, lazy snowfall or a swift and rushing blizzard.

3D Studio Max Lesson 1.3
The third part of our first lesson in 3D Studio Max's tools covers the panel of primary tools taking up the right-hand side of the interface. These are the main tools that you will use to create, modify, and control your objects.

Flash Free Transform Tool
Use the Free Transform Tool to scale and change your shapes in any number of ways.

Using loadVariables()
Using loadVariables() to pull values from an external file lets you update data in Flash movies quickly and easily without having to edit or republish the movie.

Flash Preferences
Changing your preferences lets you customize Flash's program defaults to provide the most comfortable personalized animation experience.

Review: Flash MX 2004
While Flash MX can be a tad confusing for the unitiated, Macromedia once again comes through with a stellar improvement on its renowned Flash 2D animation and application design software.

DreamWorks
Dreamworks Animation SKG, is the highly successful, animation-oriented subdivision of Dreamworks SKG. While DreamWorks is a fairly recent addition to the animation industry, it has skyrocketed to become a major player, competing with several other shining newcomers.

Flash Motion Guides
The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but that doesn't mean you have to tween that way. Learn how to assign your Flash Motion Tweens to paths called Motion Guides, so that you can animate along complex paths with only two keyframes.

Flash Spotlight II: Masking
Learn layer masking to explore yet another way to create a spotlight that follows the mouse around the Flash stage to reveal your movie.

Flash Cursor Spotlight
Use simple layers, transparency, and a few basic ActionScripts to make a spotlight follow your mouse cursor to reveal a hidden scene.

Paint Bucket Tool
The Paint Bucket tool is a simple, easy-to-use fill tool for Flash.

An Education in Animation
Choosing a school can be a big decision; where you go to school and the major that you select can shape the course of your career for many years to come. When deciding on a degree in the many areas of computer animation, the decision could be easier than you think.

Expand to Browser
You can expand your Flash movies to fit any browser at any side just by changing the measurements in the HTML embedding to fit a percentage instead of a fixed pixel amount.

Flash Costume Doll
Don't feel like getting dolled up for Halloween? Then create a virtual doll to do the trick-or-treating for you. This lesson starts off a two-part look at how to create a Flash version of a paper doll, by walking through creating the various layers of artwork required and arranging that artwork in Flash.

Importing an Image Sequence
You can import a series of numbered images to Flash and have the program automatically distribute them in sequential order across keyframes.

Parent's Guide to Anime Terms
Do you know what your kids are talking about when they tell their friends that they just bought a yaoi manga? What about the new anime you just brought home at your child's request, with "hentai" splashed across the cover; do you know what those words signify about the content inside the cover? If not, this primer should help you translate the various genres of Japanese import media to determine just what is and isn't appropriate for your children.

Dynamic Random Motion
You can use random motion animation not only to manipulate objects created on the Flash stage, but also to manipulate dynamically drawn objects.

Decorate Your Flash Christmas Tree
Try decorating your very own christmas tree.