Digital animation

Hello, I have officially spent an entire week on a single shot and I feel like jumping into a very deep hole at the moment. So right now I am jumping into a very deep hole investigating ways to animate digitally, as I figured I could get away with it for the fast shots where the kids are small in frame, as they would zip by too fast to need much detailing or accurate in-betweening (my main issue with the digital method) and I could do faster timing. Hopefully.

So I've been doing some experimenting. I would want to be drawing in Photoshop by preference, naturally, but the timing is terrible. I remembered reading somewhere about having After Effects open and using both at the same time, but Aftereffects does not seem to pick up new layers added after import. And After Effects does my head in anyway. A favourite artist/animator of mine (http://qinni.tumblr.com/) recommends timing in Flipbook first, except I don't really want to buy more software even though it looks like a cool program.


Then I came across this: http://joshuakahan.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/flash-to-photoshop-importing-flash-animations-into-photoshop/

It looks promising, as I have had a little experience with Flash and the timing is GREAT. Now I just have to relearn it...

... and, aside from a couple of d'oh speed bumps (not setting stage dimensions before work), Flash is working out very well. I have the key poses of a running shot very roughly sketched out in Flash, then exported to a PNG sequence which can then be imported as a Video Layer into Photoshop. I wouldn't do this for a slow, zoomed in shot however, as I am not precise enough with my Bamboo tablet.

In other news, I give up on inking. I have done three shots so far, and although comparatively speaking it doesn't take too long (I reckon I could probably fit 5 shots into a day's work if I tried) I am unimpressed by the wobbly, ever straying line I keep producing. Sooo... I would like to just apply some Levels adjustment to my pencil drawings and hope for the best... man, if I decided this earlier I would have made the lines cleaner/darker! As it stands, I probably won't be able to do a clean paint bucket fill for colouring... bleh.