Adobe Community: Flash as a Character Creation tool... After Effects as the Animating tool

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Flash as a Character Creation tool... After Effects as the Animating tool

Feb 14, 2013 7:35 AM

I was watching a tutorial in Lynda.com in which an animation studio in California used Flash as their drawing and painting tool for the creation of Characters... not sure what they used for the subsequent animation of the characters, but their feeling was that Flash was a better intuitive freehand/variable width outline creation program than Illustrator or photoshop for this application... I'm not sure of their choice of Animating tools, but, its been my feeling that After Effects seems to be a more user friendly (organized) and robust, yet less confusing keyframing program than Flash... thus my question on the subject matter is....... does anyone out there have any experience with this scenario of using Flash for character creation then exporting the hopefully layered and vector artwork into After Effects for animation, and if so what is the proper workflow as far as exporting goes from Flash to get the character set up in After effects for animating. I know the rigging and Hierarchy workflow in After Effects... more specifically I'm asking about file type for exporting from Flash to possibly keep the vector characteristics once in After Effects. If I am off in my thoughts please clarify for me if possible the best programs for these applications!

526 Views 3 Replies Latest reply: moccamaximum, Feb 15, 2013 4:19 AM

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1. Amy Blankenship,

Feb 14, 2013 9:19 PM in reply to henryroff01

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I can't imagine that AfterEffects could be better than just Flash for this, considering how many features Flash has just for this (such as the Graphic symbol for synchronization and inverse kinematics). But if you do find a fantastic workflow, post back!

After a quick web search, I found this:
http://mos.futurenet.com/pdf/computerarts/CAP102_tut_anim.pdf
and this
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/integrating_fl_ae.html

Compare to
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/design_character_pt1.html
or
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/character_animation_ik.html
or even
http://active.tutsplus.com/articles/general/flashs-underrated-graphic- symbol/

Message was edited by: Amy Blankenship

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2. henryroff01,

Feb 14, 2013 11:19 PM in reply to Amy Blankenship

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I have used both Flash and After Effects for rigging and animating characters, and I find After effects to be much less confusing... it also has the null objects and controllers that make the animation feel more simplified and intuitive to me, which I like... The nesting of layers and motion tweens within other layers and all the symbol stuff confuses me in Flash. After Effects also seems to give alot more options as far as exporting of media types. On the flip side, Flash has the ability to draw with the pencil and paint with the brush in vector providing the ability to freestyle and move vector points around a little easier than in Illustrator... I guess that I was hoping that there was a way to bring a layered character from Flash into illustrator or directly into After Effects without losing the vector qualities... I only found one particular comment so far that suggested bringing the Flash file exported as FXG file type into Illustrator which can then be brought into After Effects as a layered Illustrator file. Was hoping others had experience and insight into what the best workflow and/or Adobe programs most intuitively and easily accomplish this ability to create the characters in vector form in a freestyle drawing method, then grouping and layering to create the hierarchies and parenting possible to animate. I've been watching some Lynda.com tutorials in which they do their animating in After Effects, but they do their character creation in either Illustrator or photoshop... which is fine, but too much pen tool...

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3. moccamaximum,

Feb 15, 2013 4:19 AM in reply to henryroff01

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My experiences back your theory.

I love Flash with a Passion for years Its great for low budget projects because it lets you pump out results fast. But it also has its faults as soon as you move into the medium budget realm, with more than 4-5 people working on the same project for more than a month. It will get messy, you will start to loose more and more work because of flashs rising crash tendencies. It may come in handy even in big budget productions, but solely as a Preproduction tool, that you use for developing storyboards or pitch ideas. After Effects has a steeper learning curve but in the end I would say its a much more reliable, solid tool for animators than Flash.

I felt actually inspired by your post to come up with a little comparison bewtween flash/AE concerning the character animation workflow

Character animation Celebrity Deatmatch : FLASH vs. AFTER EFFECTS

	Flash	After Effects
Robustness	-	++
Shared Assets across platforms	-	++
Auto-Lipsynching options	--	++
Drawing Capabilities	++	0
Quick Results	++	-
TargetFormats	-	++
Animationlimit	1 min	>60 min
2nd Party frameworks especially for animators	--	++
2,5 D/3D capabilities	--	+
Audio workflow	--	+
Interactive capabilities	++	--
Programming language	++	0
Particles	-	++
Accessibility	++	+

I was astonished that the result was so clear.

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Flash as a Character Creation tool... After Effects as the Animating tool

Feb 14, 2013 7:35 AM

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