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Bringing your Animation to Life Using keyframe animation, it is too easy to create dull, robotic animation. Linear paths make for lifeless animation. This tutorial will demonstrate a few ways to apply some of the Principles of Animation, into your Flash projects. |
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Anticipation and Follow Through Naturally, before an object with awareness moves forward, it anticipates the motion, by moving backwards slightly, first. After finishing the forward action, it doesn't completely come to a stop all of the sudden- it pulls back a little bit. This should be especially apparent if the action doesn't ease out. Raise you hand to eye level and hold it still. Now deeply relax the bones in your hands, and then casually move it about one foot to the side. Watch closely the anticipation and follow through motions which naturally occur. To create a gross cartoony effect, every sweeping motion without obvious easing should have a contrasting action at it's beginning and end. If you play Ball #1 you can see that it is on a linear path. It just goes straight to the end point, at the same speed all the way there. Although the motions are subtle, Ball #2 pulls back momentarily, before easing ahead. At the end, it bounces a bit. This creates a more natural, and interesting animation. 
To apply these effects in Flash, first animate the main path you want an object to follow, and enable Motion Tweening. Next, add new keyframes (F6) a few frames after the begginning frame, and a few frames before the last frame.
On the second keyframe (frame 3), move the object behind it's original position. On the third keyframe (frame 18), position the object farther than the end destination.  Double click between the 2nd and 3rd keyframe, and in the Tweening tab, set the easing In.
This is the first step to creating natural looking animation. You can use this technique animating anything which moves, rotates, or scales.
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