BACKSTORY : part four

As mentioned in previous posts, I was trying to do my animation using Pinnacle10/Photoshop/Painter programs. Using these programs things were do-able but very hoggy in the use of space and time. They certainly have their places. I use the later two to do cartoons for the Dulcimer Players News. Dan Landrum beat me to the punch by having somebody do single panel cartoons for his magazine. I don't know who did them but I'm guessing he didn't play a dulcimer. I've been doing cartoons for about a year for Dan and the DPN.

I pencil in the drawing and using a light box, I ink in the drawing on a paper place over the pencil sketch. (I could be doing this on a the Wacom tablet but I haven't gotten that use to it yet to go completely digital ... but that's the plan.) I then scan it into a computer and import it into my drawing programs, clean up the image and then add color. Finally I add the wording ... as needed.

I was about to give up the project when I lucked into a used copy of Flash CS3. Flash is a program designed specifically for animation. If you see cartoons on the web ... then you are probably watchin Flash. It has some pretty neat tricks to speed up the process.

Full animation requires drawings for 24 frames per second for film (30 frames for video ... yes I know there are no frames in video but thats the rate of pictures anyway. ) In the old days they would twosie it pictures ... or take 2 frames for each drawing. This would give you smooth movement for half the work. Traditionally in an animation studio, the head animators would do key drawings with an assistant doing the inbetween drawings.

Flash allows you to work on a time line and pick a frame to start a movement and further down the timeline choose an ending point and let the computer do the inbetween work. The program allows for transparancies to simulate a digital cell. The negative is that there is a hell of a learning curve and it has it's quirky little moments. Things are done by trial and error. In my case mostly error.

My first Flash piece was for a really nice local dulcimer festival in Mt. Dora, FL, called the Central Florida Dulcimer and Autoharp Festival. For th last two years Ruth has let our Florida Sunshine Dulcimer Society ( www.fldulcimer.com ) host her festival info. The second year I took the lap and did a header using Flash. ( http://www.fldulcimer.com/2009cfldandaf.html ) This was done with found images of dulcimers and instructors. Ruth was pleased and so was I.

Things began to look up.