One of the most common questions we get here at flashrunners is “0mgzzz~~!~ how d0 u maek ur an!mzzz?!?!?~~~” or something of that ilk.

Well, it’s quite simple, and if you can figure it out on your own, we’d love if you’d come animate for us. First, “Buy” *winkwink* this program

That program itself is a lot more fully featured than you might think. you can make entire websites and games, hence why you have to download “flash player” everywhere you go. but you don’t need to learn any programming, you just need to draw stick figures. Still, we’d prefer you use it to something more basic, like this, simply because the less complex animation tools are more limited. While there may be less of a learning curve, it’s tougher to make something genuinely good.

Once you get this program, start to mess around, and learn to make simple animations, much like you’d learn simple moves tumbling. try to get most movements down pat. if you need tutorials, I’d suggest these:

• spacing/exaggeration tutorial
• showing weight properly
• basic stick figure movements tutorial

I’m not going to tell you how to get an animation started, I’m sure you’re not too much of an idiot. (by the way to get a new animation started click flash document when flash opens ok you’re welcome)

Ok, so let’s say with all of these tutorials, you can animate a decent guy, but can’t do the more complex movements like fulls, doubles, triples, quads, roundoffs, b twists, rudys, arabians, etc.

What to do, is find yourself a reference. you can use youtube for this, or you can use a physics engine like endorphin. (you need to make an account to download it but it’s free) It’s very difficult to get the hang of, but once you do, you can pretty much trace your animations in flash over it frame by frame. be warned, endorphin is for seasoned pros. don’t think you can just hop in and figure it out in a day. Even if you did in flash, I’ve been animating professionally for multiple different studios for several years and it took me about a week. Don’t expect animation to come easy.

so, let’s walk through the whole process of making an endorphin animation into a stick anim.

• open endorphin
• make physics simulation
• export .avi from side viewport
• close endorphin
• open flash
• set framerate to something decent (15-60, I usually do 24)
• file>import to stage>find your endorphin vid
• change the settings to make it a graphic, and embed the vid in the swf
• trace over it frame by frame
• delete the video, size the anim how you like it (I’ll trust you to figure that out)
• file>export movie
• export it as a gif, make sure the final size is under 200kb.

Once you’ve made your anim, submit it! be sure you link to your blog so you can show the world how great-an-animator you are, and reap the followers! If the anim’s not shitty, I’ll approve it.

thanks for reading

now go fuck yourself c: