Animation, Web Design, and so on...

[divinephoenix]

Not really, because I know most of the stuff you said already

[AnitaGuida]

lol
Then I'm sorry for not being much of a help ^^''

[divinephoenix]

That's ok. But do you know if I draw someone on the first keyframe and did an ending action on another. Would it look like the ones in the links?

[Slash]

Alright, got an easy question for you webbers. I'm getting ready to upload my site for my portfolio final. This website I'm launching is complete garbage. I'm not a big fan of web, I'm doing it because it's mandatory.

That being said, it only really needs to be up for about a month.

I doubt any "web services" give you URL's for only a month, but I'm looking for something as cheap as possible and hassle-free. (I know nothing about domains, so I don't want to pay for something I don't need). Anyone have any favorite places to buy domains, and for the least amount of time? Thanks in advance.

[AnitaGuida]

That's ok. But do you know if I draw someone on the first keyframe and did an ending action on another. Would it look like the ones in the links?

Ending action? what do you mean?

Anyone have any favorite places to buy domains, and for the least amount of time? Thanks in advance.

I usually put mine on a free domain, that i can erase when ever i want, it would be good for you, thougth it's portuguese, so i don't know if you can unsderstand it. But if you want do place it there, i'll be glad to help you out. Here's the link: http://homepages.sapo.pt/
Sorry i don't know any in english...

[divinephoenix]

That's ok. But do you know if I draw someone on the first keyframe and did an ending action on another. Would it look like the ones in the links?

Ending action? what do you mean?

Ending action meaning Last pose.

[AnitaGuida]

Ending action meaning Last pose.

If you have a face like this in the beggining -> and you have the mouth in a diferent frame of the eyes, and in the end u pic up this face -> and converted the mouth so it would be this face -> , and you put shape tween inj the mouth frame, it should work out. But the image of the mouth has to be the same. If you just want to move a person arm, just use the motion tween....

Was this the question? I'm sorry my english should be better.....

[divinephoenix]

I sorta get it

[Dreams]

I doubt any "web services" give you URL's for only a month, but I'm looking for something as cheap as possible and hassle-free. (I know nothing about domains, so I don't want to pay for something I don't need). Anyone have any favorite places to buy domains, and for the least amount of time? Thanks in advance.

If you want a domain, you'll more than likely have to pay for a year's worth of time. But domains are really cheap and can be gotten anywhere. GoDaddy.com and Arvixe.com offer good prices on domains; I've used both of them and not had problems with either.

If you just want hosting, your URL will end up being something like www.hostname.com/yourname, which really isn't a big deal. You might be able to find free hosting that will suit your needs, but it's essential to make sure you get enough space & bandwidth, plus find a place without ads (ads ruin a site). Free hosts that might meed your needs are Fateback.com, Web1000.com, or Awardspace.com. I have not personally used these, so I have no guarantee. How big is your website altogether?

Paying for hosting can get expensive because places usually want to charge you for a year up front, and the average price falls around $7/mo. If you choose to pay for web hosting, all the hassle of finding a place with enough space and no ads and something that'll support all your file types will be eliminated. I still highly recommend Arvixe.com (it's what I use). I'm really sure that you can pay per month on there, but you'll have to check it out for yourself. I have no guarantee, since I pay per year. If you do end up paying for a year, their price is $40/yr, which is remarkably cheap for what they offer (and in comparison to other hosts).

Let us know what you pick, and make sure to give us a link to your portfolio when it's done!

[Dreams]

That's ok. But do you know if I draw someone on the first keyframe and did an ending action on another. Would it look like the ones in the links?

Animation is built on keyframes and timing.

First, you think of an action you want to animate. Like, I can do an animation of blinking eyes. It might not be the best example, but it'll show you the basics:

Beginning keyframe - where the action starts
Ending keyframe - where the action ends

This is what you should start with for any action. Then you do:

Breakdown - usually comes in the middle of the action

Flash is great for this, because you can stack layers on top of one another (and use an onion skin mode) to be able to see what you have to draw next in relation to the other frames. Now you've got a guide for how the action plays out. If you're doing something detailed, you'll want to put drawings inbetween the keyframes & breakdown. With blinking, however, I usually just put the three frames together and it makes a pretty nice animation:

Blinkity blink

The next key you need to figure out is the timing, which obviously varies per action. Traditional animators (and they forced me to do this in school) would stand in front of mirrors with stopwatches until they were satisfied with both the action, and understood how long the action took. It's easier to figure out timing in Flash, because you can move frames around until it looks right. Generally, once you've got your keyframes and breakdown, you can see how long the action should take. But it's not brain surgery, and like I said, there's plenty of room for error when using Flash because it's easily fixable.

Tweening is when you can let Flash fill in the inbetweens (and even the breakdown, if the action is simple enough). But this is only for simple things, like if someone is waving and their arm is just going back and forth. Other than that, you should hand-draw as much as you can to avoid the Flash-forced tweening from making the action look awkward or sterile.

The wings and pie are tweened in this

You'll still need to create beginning and ending keyframes. Then, in Flash, you can right-click inbetween them and tell the program to add a tween. Usually you'll just use motion tween, which it will be set to automatically. Tweening like this is a huge time-saver, but like I said, use it wisely.

And, you should only animate piece by piece. If you want to make a guy jumping at someone and slashing them with a sword, you'll have to break it down into individual actions. First, do the beginning and ending keyframes of him jumping, and breakdown that action. Then work on him slashing in the same way.

Did that help at all?

[Slash]

Thanks for the recommendations. I've actually asked one of my friends today and he also said GoDaddy is a good site.

When you say hosting, you're confusing me a bit. We're unfortunately not allowed the whole www.medicoreurl.com/mysite. It has to be a straighforward URL, no '/'s (Excuse me for my ignorance, as I said before this isn't my forte. Hope I'm not confusing you). So I guess a domain name is what I'm looking to purchase, is that correct?

[Dreams]

Yes, then you have to get a domain to have just www.whatever.com. I don't know of anyplace that gives out free domains (Namezero used to, back like... 7 years ago, lol), so I would just try to grab something affordable.

But domain names and hosting are two separate things. When you buy a domain name, you're literally just buying the www.whatever.com URL. That's it. You still have to put all your files up somewhere. Now, you can use a free web host to put your site online, and then have your domain "point" to that website. Like, when someone goes to www.whatever.com, they'll see that URL in the address bar, but they'll actually be viewing your site on www.longname.com/etc/index.htm (but they won't know it).

Like I was mentioning, there are some problems in picking free web hosts - finding a place that doesn't force ads all over your site, and making sure you have enough space and bandwidth. Paying for hosting takes care of all those problems, but in your situation, you're only interested for having it up for a month? So paid hosting might be a waste of money for you. With domains and hosting, places usually only allow you to pay for a year at a time, not month-by-month or anything shorter. And hosting is more expensive than a domain. GoDaddy offers hosting too, but I HAVE used their hosting and it's awful. (But for some reason, their domain service is great.)

So, anyway... I don't know if I'm making sense again. Um... I would suggest seeing how much space your whole website/portfolio is going to require first. Then check out those three free web hosts I linked in my other post and see if those would work. You probably will not have to worry about bandwidth. You can even sign up for all of them and take them for test drives (upload some files or whatever).

[divinephoenix]

That's ok. But do you know if I draw someone on the first keyframe and did an ending action on another. Would it look like the ones in the links?

Animation is built on keyframes and timing.

First, you think of an action you want to animate. Like, I can do an animation of blinking eyes. It might not be the best example, but it'll show you the basics:

Beginning keyframe - where the action starts
Ending keyframe - where the action ends

This is what you should start with for any action. Then you do:

Breakdown - usually comes in the middle of the action

Flash is great for this, because you can stack layers on top of one another (and use an onion skin mode) to be able to see what you have to draw next in relation to the other frames. Now you've got a guide for how the action plays out. If you're doing something detailed, you'll want to put drawings inbetween the keyframes & breakdown. With blinking, however, I usually just put the three frames together and it makes a pretty nice animation:

Blinkity blink

The next key you need to figure out is the timing, which obviously varies per action. Traditional animators (and they forced me to do this in school) would stand in front of mirrors with stopwatches until they were satisfied with both the action, and understood how long the action took. It's easier to figure out timing in Flash, because you can move frames around until it looks right. Generally, once you've got your keyframes and breakdown, you can see how long the action should take. But it's not brain surgery, and like I said, there's plenty of room for error when using Flash because it's easily fixable.

Tweening is when you can let Flash fill in the inbetweens (and even the breakdown, if the action is simple enough). But this is only for simple things, like if someone is waving and their arm is just going back and forth. Other than that, you should hand-draw as much as you can to avoid the Flash-forced tweening from making the action look awkward or sterile.

The wings and pie are tweened in this

You'll still need to create beginning and ending keyframes. Then, in Flash, you can right-click inbetween them and tell the program to add a tween. Usually you'll just use motion tween, which it will be set to automatically. Tweening like this is a huge time-saver, but like I said, use it wisely.

And, you should only animate piece by piece. If you want to make a guy jumping at someone and slashing them with a sword, you'll have to break it down into individual actions. First, do the beginning and ending keyframes of him jumping, and breakdown that action. Then work on him slashing in the same way.

Did that help at all?

Yes it did, Thank you very much ^^

[Slash]

The whole class is supposed to be uploading tomorrow, so I'm thinking perhaps my school has some sort of hosting they're gonna use. If not, I will absolutely refer to your recommendations. I'm not too sure how big my site is at the moment, because I'm still trying to slap it all together at the final minute xD

Although I do have one question. One of the students made a website with dreamweaver, and had some pretty fancy thumbnails. I didn't know if you would know how to do them, or at least know what that type of "animation" is called, so that I may look up a tutorial.

http://www.yournextgraphicdesigner.com/

that's my friends website, and the thumbnails are right on the index page. Once you click, that's the kind of animation I'd want (Hell, I dont even know how to make thumbnails, of course Im sure there are plenty of tutorials out there for that).

Any idea on how to get that thumbnail animation?

[Dreams]

Yup, it's Javascript.

If you see something like that, usually you can look at the person's source code and find the Javascript file(s). If you download and open them, the creator of the script most always puts their name and/or website and/or email in there, so you can easily find the tutorial:

Lightbox 2

Pretty simple code. I had fun, lol.
Everything should be explained on the page, but I can try to help you if you have trouble with it.

[Slash]

Hehe, awesome! Megaman down for the count though? I think not.

Site is, uhm, up? First things first, its not even close to being complete. My portfolio has a ton more stuff, and the rest of my pages are a bit meager.

That, and I probably need to buy a host. Im not allowed to have any ads or anything like that, so Im a bit limited to what I can use. I hear 1on1 (I think thats the site) has a nice deal for hosting, so I might take em up on that.

If you check this link a week after this post (www.theprimedesign.com), my page will be there.

Until that time, I'm routing it through my companies webspace.
www.digitaldgs.com/www.theprimedesign.com

I havent did Lightbox yet, as I'm kinda behind on my portfolio, so it might have to wait until I can finally breathe again (After this coming wednesday) to put it into action.

As for that though, if you get a chance check it out. Any feedback would be appreciated. It's nothing special, I know, but like stated earlier, this is only because a website is mandatory for a passing grade.