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Digital Cel Animation

Assigned Activities Step 2

Create a Cel animation

This activity assumes you have completed the tutorials in Step 1

This will be a simple animation, using 2 objects on one layer, with 20 frames.  The objects will be moved across the stage from left to right.  You will use manual cel animation techniques to perform the animation.  Tweening will not be used in this activity.

  • Open RAVE 2.0, and start a new movie using the defaults
  • The timeline will be on Frame 1, but there will be no objects on the stage.  By default, the stage is 500 by 500 pixels
  • Add 2 objects to the stage, a circle and a square
    • Click on the ellipse drawing tool.  Hold down the CTRL key and draw an ellipse.  It will be constrained to a circle.  Make it about 100 pixels in diameter and place it in the top left quadrant
    • Click on the rectangle drawing tool.  Hold down the CTRL key and draw a rectangle.  It will be constrained to a square.  Make it about 150 pixels wide.  Place it in the lower left quadrant.

      You will note that two objects (Rectangle, and Ellipse) are now added to the timeline, in Layer 1, and there is a dot for each in Frame 1 on the timeline.  Each object is independent, and is the equivalent of a cel in traditional animation. 
       

The rest of the animation process will consist of copying the objects and moving them incrementally in each of the next frames

  • Turn on onion skinning.  Click the Show Onion Skinning button on the timeline.

    This will enable you to see where to put the objects in each new frame  
     
  • Select both objects on the stage.  Copy them (CTRL C).
  • Click the next frame on the timeline (frame 2).  Paste the objects (CTRL V)
  • Without clicking on them, move them to the right, and up.  To do this use the cursor keys.  Each click of a key will move the objects one pixel.  Go right 5 pixels and up 5 pixels.

    With Onion skinning on, you should see the objects on frame 1 as well.
     
  • Copy both objects again
  • Click on the next frame, paste the objects and move them again.  Continue the process for 15 or so frames.
  • When you have 15 or so frames, turn off Onion Skinning, and play the movie using the controls on the lower left of the stage window. 

    If necessary, stop the action, and adjust the objects in individual frames. 
     
  • When you are satisfied, view it in a web browser.  Select File / Flash Preview in Browser.

When you are finished, export the animation as a Flash movie.

  • Select File / Export, give it a name, select SWF format and save the movie

Note that this is not the most efficient way to do this in RAVE.  In fact, it is very inefficient because it creates multiple copies of the same objects, and it does not use any of the tweening features built into RAVE.  It does, however, emulate traditional cel animation.

When you are done, got to Step 3