how to make a sprite animation

[Quadrotix]

I would like to know how to make an SMBZ style sprite animation in macromedia flash 8 but literally every tutorial is way too hard for me to understand. Please can someone give me a written tutorial. Thanks

 

[FAST6191]

Draw one sprite, draw next step in animation of sprite, draw next step of animation of sprite... play them back one after the other for the appropriate period, take said animation (in maths and most animation/modelling it will fall under parent-child) and do any other translation, scaling, rotation, mirroring... steps you want with it. If for some reason parent-child animation is not available then you will have to go manual and swap out individual sprites at certain times.
https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/using/multiple-timelines.html for some discussion of it with adobe stuff.

You can later deal with the fun things like half sprites and sprite components (if the sprites are say only moving their arms you might only need to move the arm section and not have to do a full sprite) if you want but if you just want to get it done and you are only operating on a PC (not an old console with limited memory and processing power) you can ignore that for now, not to mention some of those are a bit artistically limiting.

We can discuss the more artistic side of things like why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Development is as useful as it is if you want.

 

[Quadrotix]

Draw one sprite, draw next step in animation of sprite, draw next step of animation of sprite... play them back one after the other for the appropriate period, take said animation (in maths and most animation/modelling it will fall under parent-child) and do any other translation, scaling, rotation, mirroring... steps you want with it. If for some reason parent-child animation is not available then you will have to go manual and swap out individual sprites at certain times.
https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/using/multiple-timelines.html for some discussion of it with adobe stuff.

You can later deal with the fun things like half sprites and sprite components (if the sprites are say only moving their arms you might only need to move the arm section and not have to do a full sprite) if you want but if you just want to get it done and you are only operating on a PC (not an old console with limited memory and processing power) you can ignore that for now, not to mention some of those are a bit artistically limiting.

We can discuss the more artistic side of things like why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Development is as useful as it is if you want.

please can you dumb this down in the most basic terms because I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to this stuff

 

[PixelatedIvan]

There are not many good written tutorials but I do majorly recommend the video tutorial series by DoujinPixation, works good on Flash 8 if you know the basics of the software:

 

[Quadrotix]

There are not many good written tutorials but I do majorly recommend the video tutorial series by DoujinPixation, works good on Flash 8 if you know the basics of the software:

thanks, I will try watching this when I find the time. The thing is though, I am literally a complete beginner who has never even used the software before

 

[Originality]

Give it a go, experiment, and see how it goes. Trial and error. Just don’t expect to be good from the beginning - there are no shortcuts to learning a skill.

You will learn far more from trying and making mistakes, than from following the advice of any tutorial or forum member.

 

[Quadrotix]

Give it a go, experiment, and see how it goes. Trial and error. Just don’t expect to be good from the beginning - there are no shortcuts to learning a skill.

You will learn far more from trying and making mistakes, than from following the advice of any tutorial or forum member.

I would love to try this, but the thing is, I have no clue what I'm doing at all and don't even know how to start. Every single time I have even attempted to so far it just gets me frustrated

 

[FAST6191]

thanks, I will try watching this when I find the time. The thing is though, I am literally a complete beginner who has never even used the software before

Have you ever done any other animation before? Stop motion, hand drawn, simple computer drawn and sequenced? At its heart this macromedia/flash/adobe animation lark is much like that, just in a computer. Some of the more advanced animations (see pretty much any breakdown of a pixar film) do things that would be unpleasant to do by hand but the basics are what these sorts of programs just do in a computer.
Much like learning to use a spreadsheet is not going to make you an accountant the ability to do an action with the software will not give you what you need to know here to reasonably be able to do stuff. If you know what an animation entails then you can at least try to search/ask questions for that specific thing.

 

[Quadrotix]

Have you ever done any other animation before? Stop motion, hand drawn, simple computer drawn and sequenced? At its heart this macromedia/flash/adobe animation lark is much like that, just in a computer. Some of the more advanced animations (see pretty much any breakdown of a pixar film) do things that would be unpleasant to do by hand but the basics are what these sorts of programs just do in a computer.
Much like learning to use a spreadsheet is not going to make you an accountant the ability to do an action with the software will not give you what you need to know here to reasonably be able to do stuff. If you know what an animation entails then you can at least try to search/ask questions for that specific thing.

I have never had any animation experience before so I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I would like to make a start though...