Here is the final episode to the 3-part cartoon I made in 2003 to teach myself to animate in Flash.
Overview
One of the things I was beginning to learn from studying other cartoons while I was making this series, was how to edit scenes to imply something was happening without having to actually animate them. Next time you watch at a cartoon, think about that while you're watching it. You'll see it happens more than you would think. And let's face it I'm on zero budget and it's a great way to save time and effort. Almost like slight of hand, if the viewer doesn't know it's happening their brain fills in the blanks. I don't consider it cheating. It's kind of a great skill if it's done right and I wanted to learn how to do this.
Concept
Dexter goes back to his secret lab
"to think of a plan" to defeat the giant action figure. But the giant decides to come to him instead. Now what does he do?
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| Action figure has dexter in his clutches |
Art
I wish I would have thought longer about what I did for the engine fire coming out of the rocket in this episode. I just went with colored lines, not very stylish but with the random line art styles I have through-out the whole thing I guess it kinda fits? Nah. I hate it. I'm just making excuses.
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| Rocket with drawn lines for fire |
The laser gun is based on a toy in my collection. It's a copy of the
Martian Brain Disintegrator Gun from the movie
Mars Attacks! And hell yeah it's still in the box! Duh?!
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| Mars Attacks! Laser gun |
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| Version of the laser gun in the cartoon |
Animation
Here are 2 instances of the editing tricks I was talking about earlier that I tried.
The first is when Dexter is in his lab and the giant busted his hand through the wall. I just used a sound effect and zoomed in and out really fast several times to show that it shook the room.
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| zoom in |
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| zoom out |
The second is when Dexter shoots the rocket out of the sky. I shook the screen and you can see the reflection of the explosion off screen on Dexter's head as he averts his eyes.
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| rocket explodes off screen |
Audio
When I exported the audio from Flash I didn't know that you could make the mp3 conversion a higher quality. This was something I didn't learn for awhile so the voices always sound a little pixelated.
Cartoon
Here is the final episode of this cartoon.
Action! It figures pt. 3 (2003)
Next time I'll post the 7-part series I did called "Xylus and Dexter in Space!"
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