Here is a clip from a current flash animation for work. I'm trying some new techniques and I've found this one to be very helpful in the world of flash/cutout animation. I first started by
quickly roughing in the keys and a few breakdowns with the brush tool, focusing on poses and timing...
...then I
quickly placed the vector work over top of the roughs and manipulated where necessary,
I mention this because......When doing cut-out animation, it's easy to get stiff and lifeless animation. There's a tendency to rely on one pose and milk that for all it's worth. Adding that step of quick roughs in the beginning helps loosen it up a bit and allows me to think outside the pose. Although this is still rough, it is a much better performance than if I'd just rotated vector art from illustrator, and it really didn't take much more time.
Since I work in a commercial/ad business, these animations have to be turned over quickly, but I think we can still get a good performance, just maybe not so much polish. I would rather see this than a super smooth "Flash tween" rotation. very mechanical=no life
