Jolt Country

So, a friend of mine is interested in making a long-ass Flash cartoon. I say flash cartoon because it's the only way I can think of to make video without actually using a video camera. Can any of you fine fine fellows give me some pointers on where to get the best program for this? Preferable cost being $0.00,, possibly via illegal means? THX!

What exactly is said person looking to do? You basically should prep everything you can outside of flash be it images or line art or what ever. Flash's draw tools suck ass.

I tend to use flash everyday, I suck at action scripting, but it sounds like you wouldn't want any AS anyhow.
Transitions would have to be fudged. You can change the alpha, the brightness and/or the tint of a "symbol".
Like many things in life, the better said friend preps for this, the easier it may go. feel free to fire me off questions you may have. Just put "flash question" in the subject line.

We were planning on making a movie. Like, a movie that would, all thigns being equal, be shot live action, only we're all too busy and dont' have the, what's the word, money, to afford doing that, so as far as I can tell the only real alternative is to do it in flash.

I think you are headed in the wrong direction. You still have to prep your video to bring it into Flash. Flash does not edit video. Are you going for A Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly http://movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/ ... arkly.html
Even if this is the desired result Flash is not the way to do it.
You could somehow break down each frame into individual files and import them into Flash, but again to edit you would want to do that in Premiere or some other video editng program.

Ah, i was under the impression that you created animations in flash. Because i can't think of a low-cost way to actually, ahaha, shoot video on location, I was thinking of just drawing all of it instead, and I thought that flash was the way to go for it. If it's not, where should we start instead?

This line threw me.

Lysander wrote: be shot live action,

If this is true

Lysander wrote: I was thinking of just drawing all of it instead

Then flash is the way to go to put it all together.
Would you be drawing it on paper or in photoshop or illustrator, or programs of the like?

There are a lot of ways to go with this. What do you want final color to look like? Hand colored or solid color? This will affect how you prep your images. If you are going for the hand colored look doing all the drawing before hand the exact way you want it and then scanning it into photoshop would work. I would have everything be a separate image. Background, mid ground and your character, much like the traditional way animators did it. I would then suggest, while in photoshop removing the background from the scan of your character. I would scan at least 150 dpi if not 300. Use the lasso tool to outline your character and then do a 1-2 pixel feather. Make the stuff you want to delete the selection (control I) an delete. This should avoid the "white jagies" of aliasing. I woudl then save it out as a png. It has inherent alpha properties on it so taking itinto flash is easy.

IF you don't want the hand colored look, but still want to hand draw it, I would draw it out, ink the outline and scan it. Take it into photoshop and remove everything but the outline. Something line Adobe Streamline can take a rastoreimage and convert it to line art. From there you could take it into Illustrator or even into Flash and fill it there with color. Flash too has some limited coloring ability but you may not have the control you want.

You could also consider drawing it in illustrator or a like program. I don't suggest flash, it's just to limited for drawing tools.

Feel free to mail me with any other questions or "needs", I am more than happy to help out.

Just an assembly question I have is, will you have something like arm movement? IF so are you going to draw each frame individually or do you want a Original South Park cut-out pieces sort of look to it? This would require making the torso a separte piece from the arm that you could then move around in flash.

danzaland wrote:. . all sorts of geeky visual arts bullshit . .

How the fuck does Lysander know when he's fucking blind?

Knuckles the Sandwich wrote:

danzaland wrote:. . all sorts of geeky visual arts bullshit . .

How the fuck does Lysander know when he's fucking blind?

Open letter, anyone who supports this sentiment can join in.

HEY BUDDY, FUCK YOU!

I'm sorry, I thought this was the photoshop/flash users forum.....
OH and I think that some off my photoshop tips are actually userful compared to a large majority of the rest of this board.....

danzaland wrote:I'm sorry, I thought this was the photoshop/flash users forum.....
OH and I think that some off my photoshop tips are actually userful compared to a large majority of the rest of this board.....

The other photoshop tips on this board?

Knuckles the Sandwich wrote:

danzaland wrote:. . all sorts of geeky visual arts bullshit . .

How the fuck does Lysander know when he's fucking blind?

Yeah, 'cause since I couldn't shoot it with a camera I had decided that I'd just do all the animation myself. Fuck all this actual artist bullshit, I can draw as good as anyone! You jackasses.