Flash FX Animation

2D Effects Animation Course by Adam Phillips

2012-01-17T15:31:00.005-04:00

Here’s what you get in your first month for just $24 at BCA FX:

Wk 1: Lightning – Wk 2: Small Flame – Wk 3: Smoke Ribbons – Wk 4: Gravity
Every article is split into sections of physics, design, timing and treatment, so you not only learn how to animate the effect, but study the physics that drive its behaviour. Each week is packed with explanations, diagrams, example files, reference images, video demonstrations and lectures.

The climb steepens in month 2 with:
Wk 5: Ripples – Wk 6: Wave Motion – Wk 7: Dust – Wk 8: Surface Tension
You may cancel at any time and retain access to what you’ve paid for. For $24/month you get weekly articles, demonstrations, examples, illustrations and videos. PLUS exclusive access to the ultra-sssshh secret BCA dark arts FX club for FX wizards with FX hats.

Month 3 gets crazy with:
Wk 9: Flame – Wk 10: Reference – Wk 11: Steam – Wk 12: Light & Shadow

Sign up now!

Gobelins Students' FX Animation

2012-01-13T07:14:00.004-04:00

FX exercises made in 3 weeks by groups of 5 students in 2nd year at the french Gobelins school.

Oni - by Cyrille Chauvin, Augustin Clermont, Guillaume Dousse, Adrien Gromelle, and Thibaud Petitpas.

Brütal Vacances - by Clément De Ruyter, Eve Guastella, Juliaon Roels, Pierre Rutz, and Gaspard Sumeire.

Mad Scientist - by Chloé Nicolay, Yoann Bomal, Christine Shin, Laura Pannetier, and Emmanuel Asquier-Brassart.

The Red Light - by Karina Gazizova, Estelle Chaloupy, Sarah Colmet-Daâge, Maël Jaouen, and Hélène Leroux.

Soap - by Wyckens Manddy, Marthe Delaporte, Lea Justum, Guillaume Arantes, and Jeanne-Sylvette Giraud.

Stuck in the Sound - "Brother"

2012-01-12T22:19:00.000-04:00

An awesome display of killer effects animation.

Made by se7en

"Varfix" by Kotaro Tanaka

2011-11-21T08:39:00.005-04:00

"This music sounds somewhat monophonic, so this video was made such as polyphony in contrast.
Animation can make events not only simple but easy to understand. Each elements used in this video
separate from the meaning which they have originally, they are used for only representing something dynamic."

Michel Gagné's "Sensology"

2011-11-21T08:38:00.001-04:00

Sensology was handdrawn (painted) with a Wacon tablet at first, and later, a Cintiq, using Adobe Photoshop. The drawings and frames were then composited and manipulated in a 2D software called Animo. There is no vector animation at any point in the film.

It wasn't done in Flash, but the timin and visual style of the experimental/abstract FX animation are awesome inspiration.

Effects Animator Profile: Mark Dindal

2011-09-03T10:51:00.000-03:00

Mark Dindal has been contributing to the art of animation for the past 20 years in a variety of artistic capacities and receives his second feature film directing credit with The Emperor's New Groove. He made his directing debut in 1997 with the Warner Bros. animated feature, Cats Don't Dance. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Dindal grew up watching Disney animated classics and knew early on that he wanted to pursue a career in animation.

He studied his craft at the prestigious CalArts animation program before launching his professional career with Disney in 1980. Starting as an effects inbetweener on The Fox and the Hound, he went on to work on The Black Cauldron, Mickey's Christmas Carol, and The Great Mouse Detective. Following a brief hiatus to pursue outside projects, he returned to Disney in 1987 for a stint as visual effects supervisor on The Little Mermaid followed by work on The Rescuers Down Under. His other credits for the Studio include visual development for several projects and a stint as effects animator on Aladdin. Additionally, he directed the animated segment for the live-action film, The Rocketeer (shown below).

Listen to this great interview with Mark Dindal from the TAG blog - Part 1 and Part 2.

Effects Animation Filmography

"The Little Mermaid" (effects animation) (2 episodes, 1992) (effects consultant) (1 episode, 1992)
    - Eel-Ectric City (1992) TV episode (effects animation)
    - Beached (1992) TV episode (effects animation)
    - Whale of a Tale (1992) TV episode (effects consultant)
Aladdin (1992) (effects animator)
Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992) (effects animator)
The Rescuers Down Under (1990) (effects animator)
Happily Ever After (1990) (special effects animator) (as Mark L. Dindal)
The Little Mermaid (1989) (visual effects supervisor)
Oliver & Company (1988) (effects animator)
BraveStarr: The Legend (1988) (special effects animator)
"BraveStarr" (special effects animator) (65 episodes, 1987-1988)
    - Strength of the Bear (1988) TV episode (special effects animator)
    - Shake Hands with Long Arm John (1988) TV episode (special effects animator)
    - No Drums, No Trumpets (1988) TV episode (special effects animator)
    - The Blockade (1988) TV episode (special effects animator)
    - Nomad Is an Island (1988) TV episode (special effects animator)
      (60 more)
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987) (special effects animator)
The Brave Little Toaster (1987) (effects animation consultant)
Sport Goofy in Soccermania (1987) (effects animator)
Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (1986) (effects animator)
... aka "The Great Mouse Detective" - USA (original title)
... aka "The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective" - USA (reissue title)
The Black Cauldron (1985) (special effects animator)
Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983) (effects animator)

Skip ahead through this clip to 3:40 to see just a bit of his old work:

FX Animation by Matt Timms

2011-08-22T00:35:00.000-03:00

Avatar - Effects Guide

2011-06-29T12:30:00.002-03:00

FX design from the animated series "Avatar: The Last Air Bender"

Is Tropical - The Greeks

2011-05-30T11:51:00.007-03:00

Directed by MEGAFORCE
Animation by 7 at Machine Molle
Produced by Jules Dieng at Elnino
Follow the band on: www.istropical.com

FX Design - The Iron Giant

2011-05-14T17:13:00.001-03:00

I found these on Nagy Péter's Living Lines Library where he has excerpts from the workbook of Brad Bird's "Iron Giant", with storyboards, model sheets, and background art. It also includes these effects animation key drawings by Michel Gagné.

The Works of Matt Timms

2011-05-14T15:53:00.000-03:00

See his FX reel and other samples here.

Water FX by Kathleen Quaife

2011-04-14T15:25:00.000-03:00

Underwater Explosions

2011-03-19T08:34:00.002-03:00

Slo Mo Guys

2011-02-22T16:17:00.000-04:00

It doesn't get much better quality than the clips found on The Slo Mo Guys' YouTube Channel. See them all here.

These are my favorites.

Gobelins Students Create Animation FX Tests

2011-02-07T14:30:00.004-04:00

Joël Corcia, Noé Lecombre, Corentin Penloup and Thomas Reteuna, have completed a special effects exercise of an explosion, smoke, and electricity.

Title: Raspail
Found on Lineboil

Spilled Oil

2011-01-09T09:34:00.001-04:00

Here's a short PSA by MAKE. Displaying some excellent 2D fluids animation:

Kieron Helsdon on Animating Explosions

2011-01-09T09:15:00.002-04:00

The aim of this old CG Talk article is to show the variety of explosions that exist and to give a visual framework for animating them. It's in five parts and not bad for FX reference, check it out here.

The Works of Chris Graf

2011-01-02T14:17:00.002-04:00

Here's a few more FX samples from Master Effects Animator Chris Graf.

Here's his final show reel, marvel and drool over the astounding sense of design, timing, color schemes, and fluidity in his work.

The Show Reel of Nicolas Léger

2010-12-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

Check out the nice FX work mixed into this animation demo. See his artwork here.

Bring Color To Life

2010-11-23T12:12:00.009-04:00

See the Making Of video here.

“The beauty of chance and high speed film come together for this new commercial for Canon’s Pixma printer. Shot over two days with biochemist Linden Gledhill and Award Winning Photographer Jason Tozer.”

The spot entitled ‘Bring Colour to Life’ was directed by the fantastic Christopher Hewitt and is as simple as a concept could be but is absolutely spectacular to watch. It’s a beautiful little piece of art that just happened to be commissioned by a client. I can see these effects inspiring graphic designers all day long. You can also take a look at some amazing images from the shoot in Linden Gledhill’s Flickr account , aalong with Christopher Hewitt’s website, and these follow-ups for great FX animation references:

www.dentsulondon.com/blog/2010/09/28/sound-sculptures/
Timing and flash triggering by StopShot, see www.cognisys-inc.com

The Works of Jason Keyser

2010-11-02T13:47:00.002-03:00

Watch Keyser's incredible show reel of beautiful Flash FX Animation, and see his website with a few tutorials and samples of his art here.

The Works of Jake Macher

2010-11-02T12:59:00.005-03:00

I've known Jake for 10 years now, ever since I started directing animated series for television, and I've always relied on his incredible talents as an effects animator, check out his show reel, the FX kick in at 1:28. Visit his site with illustration work here.

More FX References

2010-07-17T09:17:00.004-03:00

Akira FX animation pencil tests

2010-05-30T11:17:00.002-03:00

Reference Reference Reference

2010-01-24T11:23:00.004-04:00

Click the pic to see some awesome high-speed photography, plenty of amazing references for FX animation!

Check out the works of Chris Graf

2009-12-03T02:14:00.004-04:00

Chris is an FX animator in Ottawa working with ToonBoom.
His style and design is impeccable and exquisite as he executes flawless fluidity in his timing and subtle nuances, giving character to these effects animation tests.

See his Vimeo site here. He'll surely be placing more clips and tests someday, make sure to see them.

Here's a fire test he made in Flash. Included are the roughs to show his progression.

Lastly, here's another quick clip he made in Flash.

Visit his blog, showcasing plenty of nice designs.

#9 - Smoke Burst

2009-11-10T10:52:00.005-04:00

So here's a simple one, a burst of smoke, very handy when you need a character to zip off screen, or to use in multiples for an explosion of dirt or dust, or even an impact of a character hitting a solid object.

Take that brush tool out and start drawing. The first 3 drawings are the easiest. Shoot them on 1s (meaning have them back to back on your timeline exposed for only one frame each).

Make certain you're working at 24 frames per second too.

Your first drawing should just be a small blob. Draw with the Brush, then fill it in (with a different color if you wish) with the Paint Bucket.

Activate your onion skin move the range finder to only include the previous drawing.Smoke as simple as this one works well by animating "straight-ahead".

Sometimes I key out some bursts with a key drawings just to see where I'm starting and where I'm going as I build the general shape of the form, otherwisem animating frame by frame usually works. Press F7 to make a new blank keyframe, and with the Onion Skin ON, draw the new expanded shape of the smoke cloud.

Below is the 2nd frame, covering a lot of distance to show the long spacing between the drawings (as shown above). The initial expansion is huge, after these first 3 drawings (on 1s).

Then the 3rd drawing reaches quite large and now from this point forward we can animate on 2s.

Your first 3 drawings overlapping each other should look something like this.

On the 4th drawing the spacing between our drawings (for the outer edge of the cloud's form) is very tight, making the outer rim of the smoke move slowly (all on 2s from now on). Always working with that Onion Skin activated, drawing the outer edge of the smoke cloud is very easy simply trace over top of your previous drawing (on your new blank key frame at frame 4). The spacing between your drawings (for the outer edge) will now always be very small, so as you trace over you're gradually expanding the outer rim of the cloud's shape more and more every frame. The closer you draw over top of the previous drawings position the slower the cloud will expand. Draw with the Brush then fill it in with the Paint Bucket, frame by frame.

Also on Frame 4 you need to start the smoke's break up pattern. Start off with a hole in the middle, this hole will initially start off fast (sort of like how the overall form of your smoke cloud did for the first 3 frames).

So here's a slow motion version of what you should have so far, with some notes along the way:

That was easy, now as we get closer to the end it gets to be more tedious, but the more time you put into it, the smoother it will be. As you get gradually expand the inner hole closer to the outer rim, you have to start making decisions as to which chunks will actually form when you run out of room and are forced to begin breaking peices off, all the while the entire cloud shape is ALWAYS slowly expanding outwards. As you can see below, you can barely see my Onion Skin is ON and I can see the previous frame as I draw the ever-expanding inner hole - no jokes please : )

I decided to make a small secondary hole too, and within the next 3 drawings had that merge with the larger primary gap puncturing through.

Now frames 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20: the inner gap is catching up with the always-slowly-expanding outer edge (click image below to enlarge).

My smoke cloud here turned out to be more circular that I had hoped, to make it look more natural (even though it's a quite cartoony design) would be to add more randomness to that outer shape of the smoke cloud, but this will work OK. The last 5 drawings now are for the donut-shaped cloud to continue dissipating and breaking up into nothing.

Zoom in close, moving around with the spacebar, and keeping that Onion Skin on you go frame by frame, F7 to make the new blank keyframe , then start drawing the donut shape breaking apart. Keeping track of each little bit can be difficult, but the more consistent you keep it and the more gradual you slowly break the peices up, the better it will look in the end.

When you get down to the last 2 or 3 drawings, you have to decide which tiny bits are simply going to "pop off" and which larger clusters will have to change on for a few more frames as they slowly shrink and dissolve away.

My timeline looked like this when I was done, drawing on every second frame after the intital burst out.

Remember, a fast initial blast out, then a gap (or multiple gaps) expanding outwards from the core, to eventually meet up with the ever-slowly-expanding outer rim, until you only have tiny bits breaking apart and shrinking into nothing.

Here's more samples using the same theories:

Hope this was helpful.

Here's the Flash CS3 file to download.

Glows

2009-11-10T10:18:00.000-04:00

Click image to enlarge

Above is a quick breakdown of how to do 'Glows' in Flash that I had quickly done for a friend of mine. It's fast and simple that's for sure, but it gives you the basic idea, here's the Flash file to go with it.

And here is the video file from a previous post regarding Eric Spiegelman's Time Lapse Film: Download

Why wield a whip when you can be the whip?

2009-10-27T14:26:00.002-03:00

Scott Peterson has been busy during his time off from being an Effects Supervisor at PDI/Dreamworks. Inspired by games like Battlezone, Geometry Wars and Michel Gagne's special effects style, his latest project was diving into the world of game development. Focusing his efforts on an appealing visual effects aesthetic complemented by simple, abstract game actors, and a unique game mechanic that gives players a new gaming experience, his endeavors has lead to the original game labeled "WhipCrack".

This game lets you assume control of a space-age whip as you crack through swarms of deadly enemies. Solve puzzles, earn upgrades, and fling your master across the screen while battling across 19 devious single-player missions.

Gameplay Trailer:

Here's the link to the game's website.

Crack that whip

Four-player Multiplayer (on one console)

Solving Puzzles

Cracking Asteroids

Multiplayer Recycler Madness

Blow Something Up

Thanks to Ehab Subahi for the link.

Incredible Slow Motion Video Of Bullet Impacts On Various Materials

2009-10-10T09:33:00.004-03:00

A 10-minute video showing the impact of bullets on various targets at 1 million frames per second. It was made by German engineer Werner Mehl who created the PVM-21 infrared chronograph, in many respects the most sophisticated ballistic speed-measuring system. There's so much amazing video reference out there online for FX animators, this is just another one of hundreds of great clips you can find. More Tutorials coming soon, I promise.

Awesome Flash FX in these 'Coke Burn' Commercials

2009-09-16T22:09:00.005-03:00

The 2D Art & Animation Crew:
Kathleen Quaife, Philip Pignotti, John Armstrong, Jeff Zikry, Kendra Ryan, Joe Mullen, and Jon Gorman.

Eric Spiegelman's Time Lapse Film

2009-09-01T22:22:00.001-03:00

I know I'm slacking on the actual tutorials, but I'll be making lots of new posts this month, I promise!

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

2009-08-30T20:00:00.002-03:00

I love Michel Gagne’s work - he's one of our modern-day masters of 2D-animated special effects, here's his latest project:

Gagne writes more about this forthcoming video game project on his blog.

Michael Moloney showing off some nice Flash FX

2009-06-30T12:30:00.002-03:00

Resources, Resources, Resources

2009-05-17T18:58:00.006-03:00

The internet has unlimited quantities of research material the effects animators.
Here's just a few high-contrast black and white clips I've found recently, awesome video footage of ink drops in water and splatters of paint on a flat surfaces.

Download:

Ink Drops (25 files / 52 MB)
Ink Flows (10 files / 94 MB)
Paint Splatter (20 files / 4 MB)

Samples:

Enjoy.

#8 - Laser Blast (Proton Stream Edition)

2009-05-03T20:52:00.020-03:00

PART 1

Let's start with the actual foundation of it and that's the actual animation of the beam or energy blast shooting out. Whether it's a cycle or just one big burst, you must create (or maintain the pre-established) the design, keeping it consistent with itself (and perhaps the series or film you are doing the FX for).

With the brush tool, here you see how I went in frame by frame (on 1s) and drew in a Ghostbusters style proton beam bursting out. No cycle in this version, though it's easy to incorporate one between the energy 'build-up' and the 'dissipation' portions on your timeline.

Get your prop ready, in this case a cartoony Death Ray device from some Mad Scientist's laboratory. Make it an outline by clicking on the small box on its layer, create a new blank layer above and below the prop, lock all the layers except the top one and work on this top layer, with the prop layer set to OUTLINE, you can see through it. Activate your ONION SKIN Button just below your timeline, now start drawing.

With that onion skin on you can copy frames over and make sure your drawings 'hook-up' if you do indeed have a cycle amongst the animation. A possible scenario would be 10 frames of the beam activating, then a 6 frame cycle as it repeats a few times then another 6 frames of the beam deactivating and the proton stream dissipating. You'd be surprised how rough you can keep your lines and shapes as well, since it moves or 'vibrates' quite fast you can get away with alot. If you like to work very rough, then make a second pass to clean up your lines.

Once complete pick you color(s) and and paint in all the shapes and gaps and any small bits of electricity or speckles trailing off or sparking from the beam.

PART 2

Once you've animated your beam, copy the keys to a new layer.
Click the new layer button, click and drag to select all the frames and then drag them over to the new layer while holding ALT down.

Lock and hide all other layers.
Select this new top layer holding a duplicate copy of all your animation.
Make a new layer on top of that again.
Drag this new layer down one level, then right click on the top layer (the same one holding a duplicate copy of all your animation) and choose MASK.

This will turn your animation into a mask layer, the blank layer underneath becomes a sublayer (the level that will later by effected by your mask).

Make your Mask layer an outline so that you can keep track of the amount of space the mask will cover, and lock the mask layer.
On the layer underneath click on the blank keyframe then go to Insert > New Symbol.

Create a single cycle of a small star twinkle, a bubble pop, any sort of 4 to 8 frame sparkle / fizzy pop sort of thing.

Once complete, go back to your main scene timeline, drag over your symbol from the LIBRARY to the stage.

Then begin copy/pasting this symbol, over and over, each one change the scale, rotation, and even flip a few over vertically and/or horizontally to create tons of variety.

As you go through the timeline, keyframe and add more symbols and clusters of symbols of the sparkle symbol, go through and select random individual ones and change at what point they begin. This creates even more randomness, appearing as though you animated a sea of twinkle sparks. In this case I had a 6 frame cycle, so most of the symbols I select one at a time I change the First box in the Properties Panel: from 1 to 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.

Remember, you can only see the effects of the mask when you have both the mask layer and its sub-layer both locked.

PART 3

Create a New Layer.
Now take your original animation again and duplicate it on to another layer on top of all the other layers.

Lock and Hide all other layers.

Choose your stroke color to a semi-transparent white ALPHA color.

Go in frame by frame and click on all the paint with the INK BOTTLE tool (choose the thickness of the stroke to 10).

This may be difficult to do if you have lots of tiny bits. but the purpose of this is to create a nice softened edge to at least the main (larger) shape of your laser beam.

Do this for every frame.

As you can see when you zoom in close the stroke thickness covers as much on the outside of the outline as it does on the inside, so the color of your outlines and your paint fills will give differetn effects depending on how transparent you set the alpha and how dark (or light) you set the colors of the laser itself (which will show through underneath).

Now click on your ERASER tool from the tools panel, change the settings of the eraser to ERASE FILLS.

Go in frame by frame and erase the colored paint (leaving the outlines intact).

To help make this easier, use the biggest eraser brush and zoom out as far as you can go, this will make the task go much faster.

Locking the layers and making them all visible (except the bottom few layers which holds you original animation), you'll notice the alpha-outlined shape encasing the masked twinkle sparks.

PART 4

Once again copy all your keys of the original animation to the BOTTOM layer underneath the prop layer.

click the EDIT MULTIPLE FRAMES button, drag the small knobs over to cover the whole range of the time line, hit CTRL+A to select all the art on ONLY that bottom layer (make sure all other layers are locked and hidden). Change the color to all the animation at once, usually a lighter color than the original base color works best, close to a white color will do. If your original base color was quite light or highly saturated, perhaps a deeper hue will work best, it depends on the background color you choose later.

Then click on each individual frame and COVERT TO SYMBOL (F8) each separate frame of animation.
Make sure each one is MOVIE CLIP symbol. Otherwise all symbol you create must be Graphic Symbols. But in this case MOVIE CLIP symbols are vital for the back lit glow effect.

Once you've converted the artwork on each individual frame to it's own symbol (on this case 27 symbols) click the EDIT MULTIPLE FRAMES button, drag the small knobs over to cover the whole range of the time line, hit CTRL+A to select all the art on ONLY that bottom layer (make sure all other layers are locked and hidden).

Open the Filters Panel, click on the Plus sign, choose BLUR, raise the numbers to whatever amount you would like to see, the greater the number the more diffused the glow will appear. Set the quality to high.

Make your original animation layer visible and compare how the back lit glow looks with the other layers overlapping it. Adjust accordingly.

PART 5

Now for the final touch. A bit of lighting FX.
This may not be appropriate depending on the style you're going for, or how the scene plays out with the background elements.

Create a new layer over top all other.
With the RECTANGLE tool cover the whole scene with a new shape.
Adjust the fill of that shape with a radial gradient.
In this case I went with a black 20% to 0% alpha gradient, clicked and dragged the source of the gradient tool so it's center is just in front of the muzzle of the laser beam.

Then keyframe down the timeline (at the point where the laser begins to cover more space) and change the gradient again to make the more opaque part of the gradient LESS transparent / more black). this will help put more focus on the beam and give the illusion the beam is intensifying in brightness by making everythign else gradually get darker and the a bit f a strobe light effect during th big blast (or cycle) portion of the animation.

Set you first key frame to a shape tween to activate the morph of the color effect.
Then key frame a few afterwards during the portion where the beam dissipates, and gradually reduce the transparency of the radial gradient so that it disappears, thus fading away the lighting effect.

Make sure you have blank keyframes inserted where you need to so that certain elements don't stick around past the timing of your animation.

Select all the frames and copy the frames into it's own symbol if you'd like, then you isolate all the animation into a single (easy to manipulate) keyframe.

Here's two more samples, with the same technique, just using different colors, and design styles.

Joseph Gilland's Amazing Effects Book!

2009-05-03T17:53:00.002-03:00

Joseph Gilland's definitive manual on the Art of Special Effects Animation is pretty much the only guide out there for 2D FX animators, it's a great read with fantastic visuals, with plenty of references from Michel Gagne.

Buy it here on Amazon.
This is the book description:
A richly illustrated full-color guide to creating stunning hand-drawn and digital special effects by Joseph Gilland, whose work has been seen in films such as Lilo & Stitch, Mulan, and Brother Bear. Create amazing animated effects such as fiery blazes, rippling water, and magical transformations. Animation guru Joseph Gilland breaks down the world of special effects animation with clear step-by-step diagrams and explanations on how to create the amazing and compelling images you see on the big screen. 'Elemental Magic' is jam-packed with rich, original illustrations from the author himself which help explain and illuminate the technique, philosophy, and approach behind classical hand drawn animated effects and how to apply these skills to your digital projects.

#7 - Laser Beam & Sparks

2009-03-19T20:35:00.003-03:00

This FX tutorial will cover the building blocks for a basic laser beam cycle with some cutting sparks flying off.

Part 1

We'll start off with a simple prop design for the laser device and then the inner core of the beam itself emitting from the muzzle.

I've just made a very simple and typical cartoon canon, ready to shoot out da deadly blue laser beam.

Leave the laser beam muzzle for now, make a new layer on top. Now, make a new symbol (whenever you make a symbol, isolate it on its own layer...ALWAYS). Within this symbol, create a 2 frame cycle on the timeline (2 drawings on 1s).
Choose your angle and position, click and drag the line tool from point to point.
First frame: a single white line (1pt. thickness).

Second frame: keyframe that same line and change it to a 4pt. line.
You can easily change the properties of a straight Line tool-made vector line by selecting it and then increasing the number in the Properties window.

This is a close-up, the end of the line would line up with the hole from the laser prop.

Now make a new layer underneath.
Create an oval shaped object, paint this object with a radial gradient (with 3 colors) the center pure opaque white, the second a dark 50% alpha blue. and the third (on the outer rim) a full 0% alpha dark blue. Looking like this:

Solid white core fading outwards to a transparent pale dark blue.
Add 50 frames to the timeline (you're still in the same symbol as the 2-frame vibrating line cycle), making this a 52 frame symbol. Select those two line art frames and holding down the ALT key (drag them over to duplicate them over and over) to copy the frames. Another option would be to copy those keys into a new symbol, and dragging that symbol into this timeline.

With the timeline extended, now key frame it half way (frame 26) on your layer with the gradient oval shape. Select the oval shape and drag your tabs in the color mixer's radial gradient settings to widen the central white part to show more solid white.

Then drag the first frame (while holding the ALT key) to the end of the timeline, then Shape tween the first and second KEY frames.

So now it looks like this:

And the layer above it (having the repeating vibrating thin line) looks like this:

Now for the 'body' of the laser beam.
Make a new gradient shape, this time for a box formation.
Build, stretch and tilt this square shape and paint it with solid white going outward to solid blue.

Now the same process, F6 at frame 26 and 52, frame 52 being the duplicate of frame 1.
Frame 26 being the same stretched square object lined up on a new layer UNDER the white line base and the oval gradient. Shape tween it so it slowly pulsates from large to small, just like the oval shape overtop of it.

So far we have the baseline white line, the slowly pulsating circular glow at the muzzle part where the laser is shooting out from and a thick body traveling down the stream of laser energy.

Now we need to make some darker blue back glows to add more lighting to this laser beam.

Repeat the process, this time place two new layers underneath your current ones and have larger shapes (a thicker rectangle shape and a larger circle shape) I've chosen a deep blue color going from 100% to 0% alpha colors, a linear gradient for the beam section and a radial gradient for the head of the laser. Shape tween both so that the key frame in the middle (frame 26) is slightly larger than frame 1 and 52. Shape tween frame 1 and 26, and observe your results.

Now make another layer, drag it to the bottom so it lays underneath all other layers, draw in a pale dark semi-transparent blue shape matching the head and stream of the laser's path. It helps to make some layers invisible and the rest 'outlines'.
I'm not going to animate this faint glow, but you can if you wish.

Once I've drawn out by paint blob, go to Modify: Shape > Soften Fill Edges...
Choose 144 & 20 as the numbers.

Remember: Put this on the bottom layer.

Your timeline should now look like this:

The final product should look something like this:

Part 2

There's a million different ways of doing laser beams and sparks, in future posts I'll have more elaborate and wild laser blasts, for now I'm sticking with a thin cutting laser type of effect.

Here's just one of many ways you can do sparks from a cutting laser or blow torch.

First draw out the path of action, five frames of a line shooting out and breaking apart like this should be fine. Apply a slight Soften edges effect to it frame-by-fraem to give it a subtle glow.

Now for the spark blast out.

Start off with a new layer and with just using the brush tool start making a few frames for the head of the spark traveling along the top edge of the straight line then dissipating. Then, each one of the frames convert the art into a symbol.
In each symbol you'll need to make two new layers (3 in all) of various colored-glows.
I started with a small white base, images below are zoomed in to see the details.

Then with a layer underneath a light blue colored paint blob slightly larger.

Then an even lighter and larger oval shaped paint blob.

Notice each one has a larger and wider Soften Edges effect applied to them.

All 3 sandwiched together:

Now to animate this single spark. Place it on the head of your animated line, duplicate it over and over for frames 5 and 6 (where the sparks reaches the end of the line and breaks up), otherwise you simply have this spark symbol on a layer on top of the line as your keyframe it to track on the edge of the line until the line disappears (in this case frames 5 and 6).

Make sure you copy this simple 6-frame animation into its own Graphic symbol.

Now comes the fun part.
Make a new blank symbol (call it spark group), and drag this spark symbol onto the stage, make a new layer and drag it from your Library to the stage again, repeat this process a dozen times.

Now stagger the timing, move the key that each seperate animated symbol appears on your timeline, move the original key that the animation is on and then move the next layer's key over, make sure to put a blank keyframe at the end of the cycle (as shown below) so it doesn't cycle again.

Now change the size, rotation, and placement of the effect to give it some variety.
Now it looks like you animated a whole bunch of different sparks.

This is the beauty of Flash, you can simulate complex effects with (in this case) a single 6 frame animated cycle.

Now that you have this animation isolated in it's own symbol, make a NEW symbol and grab this spark cluster symbol you just finished and do the same thing, drag it from the library on to the blank canvas of another new empty symbol, and spread it out on your timeline, making sure to cut it off from cycling with blank key frames, and again change the size, rotation, placement, and stagger the timing so they burst out at different various times, you can even change the brightness, alpha and tint (in the Properties window once you have the symbol selected) for each cluster of animated symbols to add more variety.

Looking something like this:

Now you must have a big flickering glow from where the laser beam is striking the surface (off screen in this case) in order to sell the final look.

To achieve this make TWO new symbol with only two frames of animation in each.
Make one a faint blue gradient going from the center outwards from white to fully transparent blue, fading out. Make the other a 50% alpha white to 0% alpha white, make both different in shap but both of them large and on a layer behind all other animation, and place these two symbols on the main timeline (underneath the laser, sparks and all other layers).

Here's how it could look:

Now we put it all together.
The more layers and duplicate symbols you have of the sparks, the slower Flash may be responding to your commands - this is because it has a lot to process for when it comes to dozens if not hundred eds of gradients/alphas and glows you may have made to make the sparks really fly.

Here's the final product:

If you choose to add small bits of particle dust amongst the beams outer rim, you could have an effect looking like this:

Simply create a bunch of symbols floating around on slow tweens moving back and forth or in a very slow circular pattern, each one just being a speck of 40% alpha white colored paint blobs.

Using these same principles and techniques you can apply some nice effects to any sort of energy blast, cutting torch, plasma beam type of animation.

Coming up next time: Tornadoes, twisters, smoke fumes, gun shots and explosions!
Till then, here's some amazing reference materials on explosions, over 100 clips found here.

#6 - Lightsabers

2009-02-16T21:47:00.000-04:00

PART 1
To start off a series of laser tutorials will begin with a simple lightsaber-style effect.

There's two ways to make a back-lit effect in Flash, the bitmap version and the vector version. In other words the Movie Clip method and the Soften Edges method.
Neither requires Photoshop, just Flash 8.

First off, the Soften Edges method.

Make a 20pt line and then convert it to paint by selecting the line and selecting Modify: Shape > Convert Lines to Fill.

This allows you to shape the line to any angle you'd like.
Copy the key frame to new layer on top.
Insert: Timeline > New Layer
Click on keyframe with your art on it, then right click on that frame to select Copy Frame, then right click on the new blank frame of your empty top layer and select Paste Frame.
Another fast way to copy mulitple fraems in the future is to click/drag to select multiple keys then hold down ALT as you drag the keys to a new location, this will duplicate the keys whenever you unclick.

Make the top layer invisible, then select the bottom layer key and change the color from your color mixer window or by click selecting a color from the color box on your tool bar.

With the art still selected, go to your menu again and select Modify: Shape >Soften Fill Edges - now choose a Distance: 50px and Number of Steps: 10 to start off with.
How large your object is and how large your stage size is all factor in to these numbers and how much the range of 'glow' will be created.

Make your top layer visible again and there you have a very simply vector art style glowing edge. In this case a crude blue lightsaber effect. many laser-style glows have a white core, the color is identified by its glow, the same goes for the old traditional lightsaber effects in film.

If you look closely all the computer software rendered was a 50 pixel wide gradient, banding in 10 separate steps, transitioning from full 100 opaque blue to a ten-step increment full alpha transparency, expanding the shape outwards as it gradually reduced the alpha, thus making it appear to glow.

As you can see below the difference between a 100px / 4 step and then a 100 pixel / 50 step.
You create two different effects, one almost appears to be a Photoshop-style blur filter, simply because you have more pixels crammed within the same 100 pixel range of the object being expanded outwards.

Now that we have the basics of the vector version of a glow, let's cover the alternative method.
This method can take longer to do if you have a lot of frames of animation to apply this glow to, but in some ways it can be more reliable, if you apply the Soften Edges technique more complex shapes, you may get strange glitches in the render, shapes turn inside-out as they try to expand the paint outwards and cross-over to cancel out the alpha colors. Plus you can apply to this to all your animation at once simply by copying all your frames of animation at once then selecting them all with the Edit Multiple Frames button, with all the art on every frame selected at once you can apply the Soften edges to hundreds of frames at once (though it can take a while to apply the effect, so be patient).

With the Movie Clip method, you convert the paint into a symbol so that you can apply a glow filter to the art (in essence converting it to a bitmap), this makes a softer and more reliable glow, however it can cause it's own small glitches in more complex frame-frame animation.

In the Movie Clip technique you start in the same method. A white line of paint, select it, hit F8 to convert your paint to a symbol, select Movie Clip as your symbol type (this is the ONLY time you want to use Movie Clip as your symbol type, otherwise choose Graphic, always!)

Open the Filters window, click on the + and choose Glow with these settings:
Blur: 30
Strength: 250%
Quality: High
Color: Blue
BAM! Instant, beautiful, cool, soft, blurry glow of light. You can apply this to any sort of lightning, laser beams, blinking computer lights, and blasts of cartoony photon energy.

A slight disadvantage to this method is that you must apply this technique to each and every frame individually, so you can have dozens of movie clip symbols piling up in your library, this is easy to remedy, you can make a folder just to dump all these symbols to get them out of the way. Also, you can get some strange glitches once you render out the animation into video, the odd time you'll see some dropped frames of your blur or glow animation that you've created using the Filters.

This is very easy to remedy, just keyframe every frame on your main timeline. No matter how many symbols within symbols that you may have buried deep within your animation, if you hit the F6 button once you select the entire layer the FX or main symbol housing all your animation is on, your scene won't be affected in anyway but once you render it out the glitches will be gone.

Another slight disadvantage, is the fact that in order to create this blur/glow you have a bitmap created in order to produce the effect, so if you happen to truck-in on your animation you run the risk of showing pixelation like this:

This shouldn't concern you unless you zoom in to closer than 200% and still, depending on the resolution you render out the video it may still not be visible, so don't worry.

PART 2
Now it's time to animate these techniques.
Let's activate the light saber. 3 frames on 1s.

Start off, the initial 'spark', then the burst out, then the expansion of the actual 'blade'.
the 4th and final drawing is the final fully extended laser sword!

All 4 drawings need to be individually converted to a Movie Clip Symbol in order to apply the Filter to them.

Again using the Edit Multiple Frames button below the timeline is nice to quickly apply the filter to multiple frames at once.

Below are quick roughs made of the light saber activating, once cleaned up and colored, the same process applies as detailed above.

Make another duplicate frame of the last fully-extended saber.
Therefore you have...
frame 1: the spark
frame 2: the blast out
fraem 3: the half extended blade
frame 4: the fully extended blade
frame 5: the copy of that same extended blade

When you are applying the glow filter with the color of your choice, make sure to have a lower glow strength on frame 5 versus that of fame 4.
on frame 4 for instance:
Blur: 35 Strength: 250% Quality: High for the Filter Properties.
Blur: 35 Strength: 200% Quality: High for frame 5. Now copy frame 4 and 5 a few times to create a vibration in the glow, of course this is all optional and to change the intensity of th glow just increase the blur's range by increasing the numbers to 50 or more rather than just 35.

The result:

Now lets add some movement. Fast movements work well for light sabers as long as your antics and overshoots are on twos and the actual smear drawing is on 1s.

Add another light saber, move those symbols around, insert some flash frames in their on impacts, and add in some sound effects and we're all set to go.
Remember, if you render it and there seems to be glitches with the filters like glows and blurs being held for longer than what you had keyframed on your time line, simply select all the layers with the 'filtered symbols' and hit F6.

#5 - Basic Camera Moves

2009-02-15T00:36:00.000-04:00

Here's a sample of a camera move with slow ins and outs:

Here it is again but with even more life to it:

Here it is without any ease in or out properties on the tweens, it makes it easier to track a character while panning with an action, but the smooth and organic feel to it is lost:

One last version, here I added some variety of ease-ins and outs and had the camera overshoot as it's panning with the action and then a camera bounce on the truck in, making it a bit softer than the #2 version shown above, the camera tracks the running character a bit better.

Click on this image to see the process on the timeline:

Download the sample camera move's Flash file for guidance here.

Here's the fast and simple way to make a basic camera move for a truck-in or to achieve any smooth pan or tilt effect. This technique can be expanded upon with more key frames and having your onion skin activated to see the "spacing" between your frames and make adjustments to have short ease-in effect with a consistent middle part of a long pan and then a snappy but smooth ease out to make the camera come to a slow stop without starting or finishing so suddenly. Click on each image to enlarge it.

Banners

2009-02-14T12:17:00.000-04:00

Anyone want to do some shameless Flash FX Blog promotions?
Here's some banner art that you can steal and use to link to this site.

Many thanks.

Time Warp: Mind-Bending Motion

2009-01-24T11:45:00.006-04:00

Some of the most fantastic reference materials for ALL animators in recent years has been high-speed photography. There's a new show on Discovery Channel called Time Warp which explores new footage and it's an amazing resource for FX artists. Here's 12 clips. Make a point to watch the show, you won't be disappointed. I'll be finding more excerpts from the program and will be posting them soon.

I've seen the overwhelming response of e-mails and votes cast and I will be making multiple Fire and Explosion FX tutorials soon, look for them in mid-February, thank you all for your support.

Bryan Heisey

2009-01-16T09:27:00.007-04:00

I was just made aware of this guy's wonderful work with Actionscripting Camera Moves! It's great! Here's an excerpt from his blog:

Announcing vCam AS3 for Flash! For those who aren’t familiar with vCam, I’ll offer a brief explanation. In 2005, Sham Bhangal and Dave Dixon released the original vCam or “virtual camera” for Flash. Let’s say a Flash developer is working on an animation and wants the animation to pan from left to right. Without the vCam, the developer would have to create tweens for each layer in the timeline. Using the vCam, however, the developer can animate a single vCam instance on the timeline to create the same pan. Simply place the vCam on the left side of the stage and create a motion tween to the right side of the stage. Publish out the file and the scene pans with a single tween! The original vCam can also be used to adjust size and add color transformations.
Now vCam AS3 brings a new array of options with added features including:
- Rotation
- Blur
- Brightness/Contrast
- Hue/Saturation
- and more!
Sham and Dave were very generous and offered the original vCam free of charge. Therefore I am also offering this new version for free. Have fun all!

Download vCam AS3 FLA (Requires Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3)
*** Note: A bug in Flash CS3 causes stage.stageHeight to be -100 the actual stageHeight if the bandwidth profiler is open. Either close the profiler or view the SWF outside flash.
Download vCam AS2 FLA (Requires Flash 8 and Actionscript 2 - performance may suffer)

The animation here shows the vCam AS3 animated on the stage.

#4 - Rain

2008-12-04T20:46:00.002-04:00

Research and experimentation is the key to everything in FX animation, whether it's CGI for feature film or low-budget Flash FX for television or online games!

The more you research, the better you'll see and understand the physical world around you and how it moves, how it displaces, how objects and shapes materialize and dematerialize, how weight shifts and balance is maintained, how fumes, fires, fluids dissipate, how stuff breaks apart or comes together. See the video below, the principles you observe here can be applied to fire and smoke as well, the nature of how FX form and deform are vital elements to learn when reproducing 2D or 3D effects animation.

For water lets start off with rain, then move on to splashes and ripples.

Start off with a 5 pt line, use the Line Tool, drag a strip down, then convert the vector line to paint. Now you can place a semi-transparent blue to -fully-transparent white gradient in the line. Use the paint bucket to click the fill in, play around with how gradient fades out till you're satisfied with the look. Make it into a symbol, this will be your 'core symbol' change this one symbol to change all the droplets at once later on.

Now copy/paste and re-size and re-position a variety of these duplicated long droplets. stretch them out randomly, then make a symbol out of this whole cluster. Then do it again with a new set "Cluster B", with a new variety of differently placed droplets, then tween them both going downwards (on separate layers) at different speeds.

Above are two samples, slow rain and fast rain symbols, isolated separately after a simple tween is made with your two groups of static rain droplets. Once combined together, you can play around with the speed of the tweens by adding or removing the amount of frames between your first and second set of keys, thus altering the velocity of the dropping rain.

For a "cartoonier" rain, stick with thicker droplets, and a solid color, to simulate the rain impact on characters or objects, make a single 3 to 4 frame water splat cycle, mae it into a symbol and duplicate it all over, off set the timing so it dosne' appear so duplicated, in fact making 2 or 3 different version of the simple splat efect can then be re-used and re-sized all over, scaling it bigger according to how close (or how low) to camera it is.

Combining the fast and slow symbols with the two altered version of droplet positions creates a bit of depth, place your character between a foreground layer of rain and another (offset timing) background layer of rain and it is beginning to look a bit better. Also, depending on the effect you're looking for, rotate your symbols at 45 degrees for a different effect.

Download the original Flash files:
-Three Rain Files-

Here's the blog of master effects animator Kathleen Quaife.
And samples of some great 2D effects for some commercial work here.

As always, research is very important to all FX animation, YouTube and DailyMotion and Google Images are all fantastic resources for studying the physics of how things work, how they react, and how they move.

There's always hundreds of samples of wonderful reference materials that are all free to watch online:

#3 - Basic Lens Focus

2008-12-04T19:38:00.002-04:00

This simple guide will show you how to make a short focus blur while the camera is shifting and moving through the point of view of binoculars.

This is a very common shot in any spy/action/secret agent story:

To achieve this you start off with opening your scene and placing all your animation into one Graphic Symbol.

In this case all I have are the many different levels that compromise this background. It doesn't matter how much animation or how many layers and symbols you have within your scene, the more complex the greater the render time, otherwise you can have all the movement and madness you wish, it won't matter.

Copy all your animation into one self-contained symbol so your timeline is just one layer and one key holding all your animation. Make a new layer on top for your binoculars overlay.

Make a giant black square that covers your entire canvas, then click and drag (holding down SHIFT) to make two circles with the OVAL tool. Click and delete the paint from the ovals and any outlines you may have. Now you have the cut-out POV of the binoculars.

Now select all the artwork on this top layer and make it into a Movie Clip Symbol.
Make sure your Filters Window is open, and choose the Blur filter from the "+" button, type in the numbers 15 for your values and HIGH for the quality.

Now you're ready to add a bit of a shaky camera effect. Place keyframes along the timeline, one at a time, F6 then shift up or down, left or right the symbol containing all your animation, you can change the size of it as well, but I'd recommend no more than 5% difference at a time if your key frames are fairly close together, you don't want an overly fast zoom in or out. the more spacing you make the more distance you'll cover and the faster the moves will be.

Of course once you're done plotting out your keys of slightly shifted and/or scaled symbol across the timeline, you tween all the keys. In this case there's only a bit of an "ease in" on the middle and second to last key frame to add a bit of variety so the tween aren't too repetitive and too even in speed.

Looking like this:

And with the blurry overlay:

Now comes the fun part. Making the animation look like it's going in and out of focus.

Make a new layer and copy and drag a set of frames that holds two keys with tweens between them. As shown below, copy the first frames (including the start and end position of one of your tweens) and copy them on top, then hit F6 to keyframe all the frames, then right click or go to the Properties window to Remove the Tween.

You've essentially copied the camera move containing all the animation on another layer, now key framed and ready to by "symbolized".

Repeat the process a few more times, grabbing frames that aren't in mid-tween is easiest and makes most sense with the whole focusing while moving/zooming concept.

Make sure you have a blank key frame at the end of each group of keys you create. Now go frame by frame (the only boring part) and click on the frame to select all the artwork on that frame and hit F8 to convert it into a MOVIE CLIP symbol.

Have that Filters Window handy because you're going to go frame by frame to add progressive blurs. Now start with the first key and give it only a Blur value of "2". and each frame after that go up by one each time (make sure the Quality is HIGH) go up to 5 (or 7 depending on how long the tween originally was, the longer the tween the more keys in each chunk you may have). Frame by frame progressively go up then down to simulate a gradual focused image to blurry to focus again. Start with 2 then 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. Is what it could look like once your done and click on the symbol frame by frame as you go ahead on the timeline to continue with the increase and decrease in blur intensity.

Here's an alternative, zoom in and blur effect at once.

The timeline would look like this each frame would be set to an increasing blur increments of 1 going from 1 to 9 then back to 1 within 18 frames.

And there you have it. Make sure your 'binoculars layer' is on top of everything, render a line test and see how it works. This is an effect that I'm sure After Effects can do quick and simple, but the principles in this technique can be used in many different situations beyond just camera stuff in Flash. But if you don't have After Effects on your personal computer than you can experiment with this theory further with any isolated FX, symbol, water, smoke, fire, steam, fumes can all benefit from a good softened effect like this. But it's not too shabby for 5-10 minutes of work, 3 layers, and not too memory intensive.

Here's the Flash file for download.

Tutorials coming soon: More smoke! Some rain! And later on some hand-drawn Flash FX tips & techniques for water ripples, fires and explosions! Till then read this inspiring article on The Classical Art of Hand-Drawn Effects Animation by Flash FX Master Joe Gilland.

#2 - Smoke

2008-12-04T07:35:00.002-04:00

This FX tutorial will cover the animating of simple bursts of smoke used in elements for puffs of dust, smokey explosions, character zip offs, full screen cycles or wipes and character or debris impacts to the ground.

There's dozens of ways to approach smoke FX in Flash, this will cover only a few methods, from these principles you can use these techniques to apply a variety of color and design styles to your smoke animation.

First off, you'll need to draw it all out. Plot out the size and speed in which your smoke will happen. Is it a fast dissipating smoke? A fast impact then slow dissipating dust cloud? Does it never really dissipate and only cycles there lingering? I won't cover any fume cycles or heavy fire-based explosions, only techniques to enhance your smoke animation once your classically animated smoke is complete. Before you composite, color, blur and efficiently re-use the elements once created, you must first know what your smoke is supposed to be doing in your scene, then build upon it, polish it off and make it look nice.

All these images are thumbnails of a larger image, click on them if you need a closer look of these screen captures.

As an example of a quick double-burst smoke effect, starting off with a more cartoony/stylized design to begin with, you keep your onion skin on and treat it like any other character animation, since this particular sample is quite flat and simplified, it's easy to just draw straight ahead, sometimes you should draw out your most extreme and largest part of the burst, and in-between your way to it. Depending on the spacing between your drawing do you wish to favor to the drawing with the largest volume or keep your timing even and space out your drawings at a relatively equal distance to make a simple (constant speed) smoke dissipation, it's all up to you, here's just one of many ways to approach it, click the play button below to see it looping.

Once you've ruffed out the shape and volume of your smoke bursts and mapped out the timing in which it must come out and dissipate through, you begin to place the final line. In this case a thick black brush line, later to be re-painted a light pale blue. Then go frame by frame to paint it all a white base color. Doesn't matter what colors you choose or what shade your background is, as long as you can clearly see your lines as you trace off those final clean brush strokes, you can easily change the line colors and fill colors later.

See how the overlapping smoke animations are all separated on their own layers? You can do this as you clean-up your artwork frame by frame so you can re-use elements of this later in different combinations if you wish. Even the cartoony blast out lines are separate and traced with a thick version of the 'line tool' as seen below.

Copy all the frames of your final composite into a new symbol, now you can drag multiple copies of your smoke burst symbol onto the blank time line of a new scene and stagger timing and edit the size, rotation and even flip the symbols as you make new duplicates on new layers to simulate multiple burst of smoke with the same 12 drawing you did earlier you can make this animation go a long way to add variety and overlapping versions of itself to give the illusion of several traditionally drawn smoke puffs popping out.

For another sample with different timing see sample below.
This is all on 1s, a fast blast out with a slower dissipation making a smoother effect.

Observe the version below, this time the symbol is duplicated scattered around in position and slightly squashed and stretched to give a bit of variety in the animation, you can even duplicate the symbol in the library, drag that on to your stage at a new point in the timeline and flip the symbol, then go inside that symbol and place the last few frames on 2s to give variety in timing to the various smoke puffs bursting out in your scene, again efficient use of recycling your own animation to save you time and still make your animation seem to have some variety in it.

Below is a sample of a smoke trail you would find hanging off the back of a car. Whether you are inking your smoke cycle with the brush tool or the pencil/line tools try to remember to separate the lines from your base color shapes. Then you can easily re-color your smoke whenever you made need to re-use it for a different scene, the Instance/Tint options from your properties window is also a quick way to re-color your symbol quickly without using the paint bucket, but I find you often loose details and can never quite get the right color you want.

Make certain you use the Edit Multiple Frames button, drag those claws across the time line (make sure to lock your outlines layer first), then Select All and simply choose your new color and it will repaint all frames on all unlocked layers.

Do it again with your outlines layer, locking your base color layer, use a slightly darker or
lighter version of the color you used previously, and presto, you've re-colored your smoke
for the scene it finds itself in.

Adding Blurs

Here we have a puff of smoke that could be used for an object impact to the ground or for a character zipping off screen. Animated stationary, starting off with a small puffy cloud, quickly expanding on 1s, then breaking apart as the gaps grown from the center outwards to make the cloud dissipate slowly on 2s with the spacing between your drawings being very small for the end. Paint it all very light gray with a slightly darker tone for the outlines. Copy these frames and place them into a new symbol.

Now you have a symbol in your library to drag onto the stage, this self-contained looping animation can now have a tint effect placed on to it, (it helps when you chose very light colors to begin with). In the properties window choose Tint or Advanced to play around with the tone and saturation you would like to achieve.

Once you've picked the color you want, you can open the Filters window under the Windows/Properties menu. Now before you go off making some crazy glows and blurs with Movie Clip Symbols, keep in mind are you doing this for the web or for television? Let's assume you're final render will be for hi-resolution broadcast animation. Because as you may know Movie Clips do not render through video codec, the filters you apply to movie clip symbols only render as SWF files, if so, you have no worries, if you're doing this to render out to Quicktime Video then this is any easy fix, well, easy but potentially time consuming.

First you select all the frames on the layer that has your isolated Graphic Symbol of your smoke dispersal animation.

Hit F6 to keyframe everything, then go to the beginning and select the first frame. This selects your symbol

Now frame by frame you must hit Ctrl+F8 to convert to Movie Clip symbol. Repeat the process, in this case it had to be done 28 times, select the frame, Cmd+F8(for mac users) and click OK. Now each individual keyframe has been converted to it's own Movie Clip symbol, simply Use the Edit Mulitple Frames button to activate the onion skin range on the timeline, stretch it out to cover all your keys, Select All and go to your filters window. Choose Blur at a value of 10 (or maybe a bit less depending on the size of your effect on screen), and set the Quality to High. Now test render it and see how you like it. You can always re-select and change the blur settings to whatever you'd like. Why keyframe every frame? For many reasons, it eliminates the random glitches Flash often has with rendering filters to video (such as drop frames sometimes occur) and it allows you total control to gradually make the blur more or less intense as the animation progresses, you could alter it frame by frame to give the effect of slowly going out of focus or the reverse.

Advancing further, here's a rough smoke blast out, wiping the screen, a great transition effect or for a nice cartoony smoke explosion to camera, the villains blasting in through the wall or a coyote tripping his own booby trap can all have a similar effect, a fast initial blast out followed by a slo-mo build up and then a quick dispersal to reveal the room in ruins or the charred character.

Here's a fast 30 frame version of the same smoke blast all on 1s, instead of the slow 130 frame version from above, this one drops all the frames from the slow build up in the middle to go from the initial blast to the final dissipation. Some animators do all their FX on 1s no matter what, but I find (just like character animation) it can look too smooth and gooey and it limits the power and snappy-ness you can achieve in the timing if you limit yourself to animating on only 1s or ony 2s. 1s and 2s used in combination always works best. Again, there's no secret to the actual animation when you don't worry about too many different tones in your effects, rough it out with outlines first keeping your onion skin ON to see your previous frames and expand your blobs of puffy smoke clouds bigger and bigger as they get closer to camera. Find a point in which each element of your smoke animation starts to break apart on itself, splitting it in the middle and animating the morphing of the clouds into smaller bits that gradually dissipate and fade away.

Here's the same version using the technique shown earlier. Frame by frame selecting all the artwork on each frame and converting to a Movie Clip Symbol. Then selecting all these frames, opening the Filters window and adding a "10" high quality Blur to create a fuzzy/out of focus effect.

Here we have a cleaner version. In this case the thick tappered clean line is inked on a saperate top layer, so that you can easily

Here's the fast version. Using Edit Multiple Frames you can quickly select all the frames on an isolated layer and choose a new color from your palette and it instantly re-paints your smoke tones, do it again for the top outlines layer to give that nice two-tones shaded smoke look.

Here's another sample of a build up, cycle, and dissipate.

In this sample the initial burst is followed by a fast clearing.

Here's some simple alterations to the samples shown above. A simple smoke puff variation, and below that an added burst outward with cartoony stars snapping out to the version shown at the beginning of this post.

Add Transparencies & Layers

Let's start over, this time with some simple shapes, "key pose" some new smoke drawing. Animate on 4s or 6s, then break it down frame by frame.

Once you have it all keyed out, you in-between your drawings, keep the onion skin on so you can achieve a nice smooth transition from pose to pose. Then take the pencil tool and with a thin line, start inking your animation. Make a new layer on top and trace over your work. Keep the rough layer locked and your onion skin on, to make any corrections in volume as you clean-up your artwork. The timing/spacing looked like this for this particular spurt of dusty smoke.

Play with the timing, line test your animation with a quick Movie export (SWFs never play in real-time so don't bother unless it's a very small and simple clip).

Once you've cleanned all your animation, you can position, size up, rotate, and convert to a self-contained symbol if you wish. Use the Edit Multiple Frames button (located just below the timeline) to select multiple frames of artwork at once for quick and easy edits in scale, angle, color and line weight of all your artwork.

Now you can paint your animation, take that paint bucket, choose your color and start click-filling frame by frame. Then Edit Multiple Frames button, and choose the Eraser tool on the Erase Lines setting, zoom out of your stage all the way, expand the Edit Multiple Frames range finder on your timeline to cover all your line art and click and drag to erase all the lines on all your frames at once, leaving just the paint. Now you have no outlines on a flat-colored simple smoke animation.

Now you can copy all these frames into a new symbol (if you haven't already). In this particular exercise we'll create two symbols with slightly different versions of smoke animation, this will create more random variety in the final product we are about to create. To produce a semi-transparent, multi-layered smokey effect, you need to use lots of alphas and layers.

Drag these new symbols onto a fresh new timeline, make new layers and scatter them on the timeline, isolating each self-contained Graphic Symbol to its own layer, move the starting keyframes for each new symbol copy you are inserting on the stage. Now make a new key frame at the end timeine for all layers, and randomly move those end frames around. Select-All and now you can change the Alpha to 0% from the Properties Window, then add the tween by selecting a strip of frames on all these new layers, and going to the Properties window again to select Motion tween.

Now you need to start making groups and clusters of these new smoke fade-out symbols together, duplicate seperate smoke symbols (always isolating just one symbol per layer) change the size, rotation and starting point of the animation... make sure all the symbols you make are Graphic symbols, so they'll play when you render them to video and they will loop themselves endlessly to make nice cycles and give the illusion that you have lots of complex smoke animations. Your tome line should look like this, overlapping FX from variously placed and sized smoke symbols, now your simple 18 frame smoke cycle looks more layered and complex.

Copy these layers to their own new 'Smoke Cloud' symbol.

Now you should have 4 symbols in your library. 'Smoke 1' and 'Smoke 2', your two slightly different smoke puff out cycles, and 'Smoke Cloud' (the symbol with all the tweens of your Smoke1 and two symbols fading out at various sizes and positions) and the 'Smoke Group' symbol that includes various 'Smoke Cloud' symbols starting at various times spread out along the timeline, creating the effect shown above. Confused yet? Symbols within symbols within symbols is the key.

Recap: Isolate your first 18 frame smoke poof out and dissipate animation into a symbol, duplicate that symbol and alter the animation with in that symbol, a few added inbetweens, rotate everything a bit, change the size of it all slightly, change the timing a bit. Now with two versions of smoke cycles, insert them into a new Smoke Cloud symbol. each one isolated on a separate level, adding several new layers with one of the two symbols placed on the stage, overlapping each other, change their size and placement and rotation slightly each time, it should look like a mess of overlayed smoke bundled together, make sure they start at different times within a range of 4 or 5 frames, so layer 1 keyframe on frame 1, layer 2 on top keyframe on frame 3, etc. So the timing is slightly staggered. Now copy all those layers to a new 'Smoke Group' symbol, with this you can duplicate the symbols over and over again, staggering the start time and timing of each one, creating more and more layers on top of each other and placing them in a pattern to create a new 'Smoke Cluster' symbol with all these new groups of stacked on top of them selves. Then Key frame at the end of the timeline all these layers, and place the transparencies of all these symbols on all these last key frames to 0% alpha, add a tween to each layer to create a multiple smoke cluster fade out effect.

Now comes the fun part. Group all that into a new symbol. Now you have a master cluster, clear off your canvas, have a new blank stage with empty layers, and start compiling your smoke clusters on the stage, stacking them around the edge of the screen, you can create any number of grouped cycling smoke screen like this, in this particular case it simulates a nice room-engulfing smoke ... with all the layered alpha smoke it creates almost a nice softened-edges look.

The combinations are endless. keep stacking more clusters together, play with the timing, how long or short the initial 'core symbol' fades away, the size and volume desired for the overall effect, and the ease in editing the initial drawings and shape of your original 18 frame animated burst out cycle will carry through to all your groups and clusters, thus you can substitute entirely new effect in your primary two smoke symbols to produce a brand new FX cycle with a different color and design of smoke altogether. Practice is key with any effects animation. Personally I find it's an even longer experimentation process than character acting to see what works and what doesn't. Instilling life in your effects animation re quires the same sort of studies you would for character animation. Find lots of reference materials, observe life, practice and experiment with timing and spacing. Treat your effects animation like you're animating a character, it requires the same sort of attention, maybe lots more 'trial and error' and happy mistakes are made through the experimental process.

Here's some further short examples of specific circumstances for smoke materialization and dissipation with the Movie Clip/Blur Filter technique added to really give a nice soft look to the classically animated effects in Flash.

Many of these designs were made by the brilliant Jake Macher.

Remember to spend plenty of time in the initial designing and timing of your FX piece. Rough it all out with some basic poses, figure out the volume of your effects, how it may interact with the background elements and with the characters, map out the shapes and speed of the effects you're creating and choose your colors wisely. The beauty of Flash is that it can easily and quickly edit your artwork and timing as you go. Path of action, follow-thru, line weight, acceleration and deceleration are all things to keep in mind while animating the FX. Strong design and appropriate color tones are all key for the design of the FX, spend time on this at the beginning. Your effects animation must match the visual style of your characters and backgrounds, you don't want your effects to look like they're from another show with a totally different design style.

That's all for now. Check out the works of Adam Phillips and Michel Gagne for some inspiring effects design and animation!

More tutorials to come soon, please comment on any other specific FX elements you would like to see.

#1 - Energy Fields

2008-12-04T07:17:00.002-04:00

Step 1

Let's begin with a very simple FX cycle.
In this case I've chosen a gooey energy field to animate. The style reminds me of the FX in Lilo and Stitch. All animated effects in the film have the nice look of being goopey, heavy, and thick. Watch the film see the water, fire, cake icing, and especially the laser blasts. Nothing has a sharp edge to it, the lasers have a highly stylized and glutinous feel to them.

Here we have a simple energy field cycle, let's break this down and start from scratch. It all starts with a nice classically animated cycle. This is where you'll spend most of your time, in getting the nice flowing, smooth cycle to work the way you want it.

First you draw it out, I use the brush tool, if you have a Wacom tablet it makes it easy to just draw free hand, straight-ahead, go back and adjust your line thickness/tapering later with the Arrow tool. The line is intended to be a little wobbly and random so don't be too concerned about a super clean line in this case, you have a deadline to meet remember?

This takes the longest to do. In this case a brush outline, a bit of a wobbly clean line to make it look a little bit more organic, the line thickness varies but it's not too important in this case. The more time you spend on this simple 1-layer, 11-frame cycle the better the final product will look. Put that onion skin on and breakdown those drawings to get to what you want, the rest is all technical. Here a simple orange brush line was chosen. Drawn the middle for the simple interior core of the looping blobby animation...

Then the more complex exterior pattern is drawn in. You see how the shapes blend in, the energy pattern recycles itself as it spins. Hand-drawn frame by frame.

Make sure you're satisfied with your magical energy cycle animation, render it constantly, fix every glitch, make it a smooth transition from frame 11 to frame 1. A trick for that is simply copy your first frame on to the 12th frame and use the onion skin to make sure you draw your way to your final "pose". Then remove that last reference frame when you're all done. Most effects are usually all on 1s, but time/budget restrictions often have you cutting corners.

Step 2

Copy all the frames of your finished animation on to a new layer on top. Simply hit that "+" under your timeline on the left, then select all the 11 key frames, then hold down the Option key (or Alt for PC users) and drag it up to that new layer you just created. Bam! You've duplicated all your artwork onto a new overlay level. Name your layers to stay organized so it looks something like this shown on the right.

Now lock you bottom layer, make it invisible and work with your newly duplicated top layer.

Choose the Ink Bottle tool and pick a 50% alpha color. In this case we've chosen a pale orange color.

Choose a thick outline from your properties window (5pt. should be good) and start clicking on all your paint.

This creates a nice overlapping orange partially-transparent outline overtop your animated paint lines. Do this for every frame, make sure you catch all the little bits of paint you might have made.

Now all you have to do is remove the original orange paint lines from this layer. Leave your original outline animation on that separate layer underneath, keep it locked and hidden. Now use the Edit Mulitple Frames button. Activate this tab and then drag the range finders that appear on your time line to cover the whole time line, this button is just two buttons the right of the Onion Skin button just below the timeline bar. Now choose you eraser tool and change the properties of the eraser to Erase Fills from below the tool bar, zoom out as far as you can, and start erasing the whole screen. It will remove all the paint from all the frames from your one unlocked layer at once. Zoom back in, you now have "outlined" your animation with a frame-by frame semi-transparent line, it should look a bit blurry already looking at it at 100% with your bottom layer visible and the original animation line art showing through.

Step 3

Repeat the process. Make a new layer, put the layer on top of all others. Except copy the frames from the layer you've just completed into a new top layer. Lock all the layers except for this new top layer containing a duplicate copy of the layer under it. Now you can quickly re-outline all your animation with thicker and more transparent line with the Edit Mulitple Frames tab. Activate this button and then drag the range finders that appear on your time line to cover the whole time line.

If your layer is visible it should look like the madness shown below. Now go to Edit > Timeline > Select All Frames, choose your ink bottle with a thicker properties line (10 pt.) and use 25% alpha for your color, and click on any of the outlines you see to change all the color and thickness of your all your top layer's outlines at once. Make sure only this new top layer is unlocked. After just a couple clicks you've got a thicker/more see-through version sitting on top.

If you zoom in and make all your layers visible,

it should look like this:

Zoom out and it will look like an animated orange fuzzy line.

Step 4

Making some masks. Take the original outline layer with your untouched brush-line animation, copy it again onto a new layer, move this layer underneath everything (even your outline animation). Same thing as before, select all frames, copy the frames, paste them onto a new bottom layer, now paint in all frame-by frame some other color (it doesn't matter what color). Keep the gap between the two blobs separated. Now Ctrl+click (or right click) this new bottom layer and change the layer properties to a Mask.

It should look like this.

Step 5

Now to place some random stuff for the mask to show through.
In this case a bunch of differently-sized and placed 35% alpha white circles in a new symbol. Hit F8 (make sure it's a Graphic symbol) and start making spots with the Circle Tool, shift and move these shapes around every frame for all 11 frames. In this case we just moved them every 4th frame, therefore there was only 3 different positions the circles would loop in as shown below.

As shown here, it's on 4s. and at every 4th frame the circles switch around. Now bring this symbol into the main stage (make your Library visible return to the main timeline), make a new layer underneath the mask layer and ensure the layer is a "sub-layer" branching off under it. Drag you animated symbol from the library to the stage in the layer under the mask, size and place it so it covers all of it. Lock both the mask layer and the layer underneath to see the effects of the mask.

See above, your spots should only be visible through the paint of the mask, now make your top layers visible to see the full effect, if you scroll through the time line you'll see you animation boiling away with masked dots shinning through.

Click the image below, this is what it should look like if you make one layer visible at a time.

Notice the locked Mask layer and sub layer, the fuzzy outline created from the multiple alpha layers, and the dancing spots isolated to where they should be.

Step 6

Now copy all the frames from your mask layer onto a new bottom layer (mind as well create a few extra layers underneath that, you'll need them later). Now (in this case) delete the middle blob frame by frame. You're left with the exterior blob animation. Make this layer a mask, create a new layer underneath it. Place a large box (covering the entire area the animation would cover) on the first frame with the Rectangle Tool.

Create a radial gradient, in this case a fire-like yellow to red color works best. Click fill in the box. Go to frame 5 or 6 on your timeline and paint in a slightly different shade of white to yellow to red transition, move the tabs around to get the effect you like best, then paint in the box for your second keyframe. Make certain your last frame and first frame have the exact same color, copy and paste the frame over to be certain.

If you make your mask layer above your current gradient box layers visible but unlocked, you'll see the overlay of the animated blob over top of the gradient, if you scroll through the timeline it will pop to the new color gradient halfway through the timeline while your animated mask will boil as usual overtop.

Step 7

Repeat this step again but this time remove the outer rim animation, leaving the middle blob. Instead of a light color scheme for the gradient, use a darker red combination.

Same process. Place a large box on the fist frame, paint it the radial gradient you choose, keyframe it halfway down the timeline, alter the color slightly and re-paint, then re-use the first frame to copy it into the last frame.

Shown above is a display of the first and middle keyframe for each blob with all layers locked to see the effects of the gradient punching through like a frame-by-frame cut out. If you make all your layers visible for a moment, you'll see the fact that the polka dots above are alpha, and the outline art with its thick alpha lines overtop are all composited on separate overlays showing how nicely it's coming along.

Step 8

Now all you need is to put a tween on the two gradient layers. Select one keyframe on the first layer with the gradient box and go to your Properties window and choose the Shape Tween. Do this to both the first and the middle keyframes on both layers with your radial gradient boxes.

Step 9

Test your effect. Render it out. See glitches in the shape tween? See flickers where there isn't supposed to be? Double check to make sure your Mask layers are overtop the elements you wish to be seen through. Your animated cut-out shapes should be the Mask layers the colors or circle shapes under them are what will be shown through. Make sure your shape tweens aren't trying to morph the shape of your color box, only creating a smooth transition from one radial gradient to another, to make that slow pulsating effect.
Presto! You're done!

The end result is a looping stylized energy pattern.
As shown below we converted the same design to a magical energy beam in our Olliver's Adventures episode in which we were spoofing DragonBall Z.

Clean-up your layers, label them properly, and then copy all the frames on all the layers into a new symbol, so now you can create a new layer and click and drag the main symbol of this self-contained animated effect from your Library to the stage, delete all the original layers and now you have a lopping effect that is isolated to one layer and one keyframe on your timeline. Copy/paste and re-size/rotate the effect over and over on the stage, select a few different versions and change when there animation starts from the Properties window to make it look like a multitude of several different plasma fields circulating. Making it appear like a more complex and in depth effect with only a singular 11 frame cycle of animation duplicated, with staggered timing and a variety of rotations and sizes.

Here's just a small sample montage of what Flash can do if you push the multiple-layers and gradients/alpha channels idea even further with a strong classical animation foundation.

And here's a sample of some simpler/cartoonier FX, showing a softer and more stylized look.

We'll be going over how to achieve alot of these effects in detail and it various styles (from simple to more realistic and complex) later on.

Wrap Up

I hope this was informative. The key to a lots of these methods is 'layers', a series of very simple techniques are used above, separately they mean very little, once combined all together they can produce something with plenty of life to them. Like any style of animation the more layered the animation and the more time put into it, the better it gets. This is true for background art, timing and acting in character animation and of course in the sometimes abstract nature of effects animations. It all starts with experimentation and practice, experiment in drawing and timing your FX shots and always gather lots of references. Practice with posing out your 'keys' and 'extremes' just like character animation. Experiment with various timing methods like a fast burst out on 1s followed by tightly-spaced drawings on 2s for the slow settle/dissipation. The better your designs & poses the better your effects. Always have an accent in your FX cycle, whether it's smoke fumes, fire, energy beams, anything at all. Depending on how stylized or realistic your approach is, I personally have gotten used to animating 'straight-ahead' while doing simple short blasts of smoke and fire or plasma beams.

Practice some 'ease-out-and-in' for the spacing of your drawings, especially for various levels and speeds of dissipation FX for your fire, smoke and water splashes. "Follow-thrus" and "over-shoots" apply to effects animation similar to character animation. Imagine a torch being swung around wildly, the fire on top of the torch will be trailing flame steaks dissipating behind it, following a path of action similar to a leather whip being swirled around. Imagine a big cartoony glob of goo being fired out of a canon, you'd even have an antic, a blast out action, the impact/splat and some drippage oozing off the surface it hit.

Rough out your fully animated effects, frame by frame, then make a new layer on top to clean and paint it like you would on paper. If you have a two-toned smoke animation, try to ink and paint the two tones on two separate layers, your thick colored outlines on top and the base color underneath. This will make it easier for you to re-color and re-use this smoke later on, as shown here on the right. Simply 'Edit Mulitiple Frames' ...widen the entire range on the timeline... hit Ctrl+A (or Cmd+A), lock all other layers except the layer you want to re-paint, choose your new color, and presto! Now do it to your next layer and you've quickly and easily changed the tones of your smoke for multi-purpose use.

If you want to see some kick ass FX reference, watch Akira for mind-blowingly good explosions, smoke, and crumbling debris every where in the film.

Here are some Animated Effects Notes I had scanned in years ago. We had accumulated 216 pages of photocopied class notes in the studio, and they are all valuable reference materials on theories, methods and techniques for animating traditional hand-drawn effects.

For some amazing free video reference for flames, smoke, flash bursts, blood splatters, fireworks, explosions and many more, visit Detonation Films. It has a huge and impressive archive of clips to use and learn from with over 15 pages of downloads.

If there's any requests for another specific type of effect or questions about any of the steps shown above, just let me know, I'll answer questions and I might be able to whip up another Flash tutorial someday, any input would be helpful.

Coming soon... FIRE!

Tools

2008-12-03T21:18:00.003-04:00

On the sidebar to the left are some nice resources in the form of Flash and PDF files (compressed into ZIPs), the first of many more to come.

Some aren't directly FX related yet, but the first one is a big archive of scans on various effects in the form of model sheets or animation breakdown notes from a few different feature films.

Then there's storyboard and actionsafe templates for Flash story artists & animators to use for series production work, here's the list description.

Notes on FX Design
31.5 MB PDF file containing:
Over 200 pages of various sketches, key drawings and step-by-step pointers on effects animation design and breakdowns from various artists including lots of descriptions and samples.

Storyboard Templates
ZIP file containing 11 Flash templates:
Five 8.5x11 inch page templates of both full production board panels and small-sized thumbnail panels in both horizontal and vertical formats, and in both standard NTSC aspect ratios (4:3) and High Definition (16:9).
Three 8.5x14 inch page templates of storyboard and thumbnail panels in horizontal format (in NTSC and HD).
One large format 11x17 inch thumbnail page template.
One HD format storyboard template with various panel sizes for camera moves.
One HD format storyboard made for the artist working on Cintiqs or Tablets where every panel is meant to be drawn full size on the stage and later exported as an image sequence for the editor and saved for the animators to directly use for layout and posing reference.

Field Guides
2.2 MB ZIP file containing:
Three grid templates with multiple and movable vanishing points.
One interactive Frame Jumper template for frame by frame analysis of SWF renders.
One 4x3 field guide with slate and frame counter.
Two 16x9 1280 pixel HD field guides with slate, frame counter, actionsafe / titlesafe templates with pre-comp layer setup.

Introduction - FX in Flash

2008-12-02T16:20:00.007-04:00

The purpose of this site is simply to help out Flash animators in the area of FX animation, I hope to update it every two weeks. Comments and critiques are welcome, and valuable resources will all be available and updated on the sidebar under LINKS and DOWNLOADS with actual FX samples and archives of reference materials.

Since I use a Mac, I currently prefer Flash 8, since it's not any different from the CS3 version, any files I make available for download (as well as all my screen captures) will be in Flash 8. I might eventually convert to the new CS4 - despite the fact it no longer renders in Quicktime format, which I personally find VERY annoying and has prevented me in upgrading thus far (sorry everyone), I enjoy the fast and easy video file rendering process to make quick tests for review, maybe someday.

To start off, I've been using Flash for broadcast animation for 10 years now. I basically got into FX simply because not many animators at the studio I was in wanted to bother with it. Either because it was often very difficult or very time consuming, so I got thrust into producing FX animation out of necessity.

A couple years ago, I began teaching part-time Flash classes to some 2nd year Animation Students at a college just outside of town, so as I was trying to dig up some examples to show them for my next workshop How To Create Basic Flash Effects, when I came upon the old Tron episode I had directed in 2002 - this was one of the first times I had to deal with actually designing FX for a particularly effects-heavy episode.

Back in early 2003, (in the middle of our 2nd season of Olliver's Adventures) we wrote a script about Ollie getting sucked into his PC to fight an evil computer virus, little did anyone know that we wrote this as an excuse to just do our own TRON-APPRECIATION EPISODE!
Above are a few model sheets, Scott and I worked on them a bit, but Jeff did most of them.

Here's a few short scene clips with no audio:

The background art needed lots of FX animation as well, lots of glowing lines and lights in particular. It was one of the animation team's favorite episode to work on, and the story artist practically killed himself designing and boarding this entire 7 minute epic in just 4 weeks. Compared to any other episode at the time we spent twice as much time in layout and FX animation for this one. Jeff Knott on Character/Prop Designs & Storyboards, Fraser Hallett & Jeff Knott on Background designs, Scott MacDonald created final model sheets, along with Sean Garnier and Jake Macher who designed some killer special effects, using nothing but Flash 4.

A few BG samples as well:

The craziest story about this episode is that this was the official "LOST EPISODE" for this series. Every animated series that goes for multiple seasons seem to have one, this was ours. This episode could ONLY be seen on Teletoon, Canada's Animation Network. All international versions aired a completely new and alternate 7-minute short in place of this one (which we later had to produce). So it would seem only Canadian viewers got to see this special episode.

Here's some Flash files of very simple alpha channel, masks, and color gradient combinations used to create some simple FX tests to just test and see if it would work.
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3

Since over 100 scenes had the character costumes with the Tron glows on them, instructions were made for the Clean-up department as to how to easily mass-produce the FX, these were eventually changed and revised for a nicer and more efficient radial-gradient-alpha overlay, but was later used for many of the lightsaber-style glows for all the backgrounds in 'computer land'.

Below are some early tests we did to figure out how the back-lit effect would work. Along with other test shots to see what colors and transparencies would work best. For the most part, just early experiments to see which method was most practical to use. Flash did not have any glow filters at the time like it does now, so the frame by frame soften-edges technique was the key. It had it's share of glitches, but we'd work around them or hid them as best as we could. For some teleportations, color streaks, and energy beam FX, a system of a dozen overlapping & tweening gradients was all that was needed to create the desired look.

See the materialization effect in slo-mo here:

So this is hopefully the beginning of a large archive of Flash FX tutorials for anyone interested, I hope you all enjoy them.