Official Chinami Fan
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Rank: Decisive Witness
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:33 pm
Posts: 197
There are many ways to do animation these days that you proberbly won't need to go through the 'rough drawings' process (which is alot more complicated than what it sounds). You should all google for an animator called 'Shaun the Touched', a.k.a White Radish. He's done his own anime styled traditional animation in the past, and is more or less the official animator of Drowtales.
In the past he did everything more or less traditionally. This means he would've proberbly:
A) Wrote the script.
B) Drew out the basic storyboard.
C) Drew out the roughs for the animation.
D) Made clean frames out of them.
E) Coloured them in photoshop.
F) Combined them all into Aftereffects with nessecary backgrounds and effects.
In the cases of some animators though, they could in theory do ALL the frames straight onto the computer if they have a tablet, sketching everything out in Photoshop (or in P.A.P and similar vector programs, like Flash).
The above staged technique was used for animations such as The Apprentice, and Pink Lemonade.
Then he started doing animations in Flash. Using his own character doll setup and a low FPS rate, he was able to recreate the effect of traditional Anime animation. You can see these animations at Newgrounds (which include Cutechulu and the Non-canon Pink Lemonade Joke time thingie whateveritwascalled). I'm trying to make the point that you can cut out the middle man and make the whole thing in flash, using either dolled animation or FBF (Frame by Frame), or even a combination of both.
Check out the below link for a good example of mostly FBF animation making good use out of Flash's other features.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/399107And check this below link for a great example of flash being used to produce traditional anime styled animation.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/206838Shaun is currently producing animations with Anime Studio (formerly known as Moho), which uses a skeletal based character setup to animate characters. This is an example of him using AS for animations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXpGP5Wte7MWhat i'm trying to get at is, is that just because it's anime doesn't mean you have to go through the trouble of doing rough sketches and the such. Everything that you can do on paper these days can be done in programs like Flash with MUCH less hassle. Since this is an amature project it would proberbly be better for you to try and search for skilled Flash animators instead. Again you could try Newgrounds for that (their BBS has a section for trying to find animators).
EDIT: Just to make myself clear, i'm not saying "hound Shaun to be the animator", as i'm pretty sure he's busy enough already. I just mean to use him as an example of the fact that great anime doesn't have to come from cumbersome traditional techniques.
Props to Clicky for the avatar! =3