Back to the world of drawing and 2d animation. I started animating this one in flash, and also tried pencil which is a free open source 2d animation program. I had intended to then paint each frame afterwards in photoshop, but i remembered that photoshop can do video layers, basically allowing you to load in image sequences, or animated frame by frame. So i did the final animation outline and then colour layers in photoshop. The result isn’t vector like flash produces, but you get access to all of the photoshop tools. Most of the time i would never need to work vector anyway. The playback was great, because its only 10 frames at 300 x 300 pixels, but I can’t see photoshop being able to handle stuff that was too higher resolution, or playing back long sequences. So, photoshop is great for doing small 2d animation tests, and shading stuff mapped out in other programs. I will definitely use it again for colouring / shading other 2d animation pieces.

Oh and I also figured out how to display pieces like this as a looping swf flash file, with transparent alpha! …check the edges. More stuff like this to come I think!

She skips all day, and never gets tired…