Saturday, February 9, 2013

Flash vs Photoshop for Frame by Frame Animation

As I am figuring out how to animate, what software to use etc..I might as well share my learning experiences. For this week I am animating a ball who figures himself to be quite the superman.

 This is part 1: The animation without the cape. I did the rough in Flash and then worked in Photoshop (still not at a clean up stage though).





The Flash rough Animation:




 The Photoshop "cleaner" version:




So what about Flash vs Photoshop?


 FLASH:
 + Very quick to work in
+ Intuitive and reliable for frame by frame animation
- There are no brushes with with opacity or texture
- For some reason I don't draw as well in Flash

 PHOTOSHOP:
+ You've got your brushes at your disposal
+ Great handling
- Frame by Frame needs 1 layer per drawing, so for this one I had 69 layers
- Once you have a decent numbers of frames, it's impossible to draw in onion skin mode (Frame rate buffering).
- Not great for quick rough tests or to make any changes

 IN SHORT:
You really don't need Photoshop unless you want to make nice drawings, so use it for clean ups. Leave the animating to programs like Flash or Pencil (although Pencil only has 1 frame onion skinning? What's up with that!?)

1 comment:

  1. Would love an update to this when taking animDessin consideration
    https://creative.adobe.com/addons/products/1524#.VrOvtLIrK70

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