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You can create web links but have to manually change the color in the HTML code To have your movie preloaded simply check the preload movie box (If you don't preload then you're movie will stream... If you stream your movie you want to take extra care about bottle-necking... I'll talk about this another time). Once you have set Kool Moves to Preload you have 2 options (represented by the radial buttons); Text Message- When this is selected you will be able to leave any text message that you want as a preloader. Simply type the preloading message into the dialog. You also can change the font size and style by hitting the options button on the right of the Text Message text input box. Movie(.FUN)- When this option for a preloader is selected then you can select a small movie as your preloader. Simply select this option the hit the ... button on the right to select the .Fun file that you wish to use as a preloader. The movie will loop until the preloading is completed. You could concievably hide (and its recomended that you do this) the fact that you are preloading a large file by putting a small game or credit trailer to the larger movie in front of it as a preloader. The last option in the dialog will allow you to select what precentage of the movie you want to preload. Remember though that what you don't preload will stream and may not synch 100% (keep this in mind with large sound files). Imagine a stack of pappers laying on your desk. The bottomost papper is at level 0 the next papper is at level 2 and the next at level 3. The higher the number there is the closer to you the level is. Now what happens is the background setting of Level 0 is the only background that gets displayed. All of the higher levels are transparent so that you can see the layer bellow it. Imagine the levels as empty slots and you can place or remove any movie you want into those slots. The load movie action places the swf into that slot while the unload movie rwemoves those from the slots. Now for the Insert Movie function... To use the Insert Movie function hit Alt F- I- Enter or select File - Insert Movie. When you do this you will see the Insert Movie interface appear. On the left will be the Files avialble. Right of that you will see the preview pane, and then right of that you will see the ADD, Cancel, and Help buttons. The first thing you will do is find the right Fun File and click on it to load it into the interface. You will see your movie on the bottom and the added movie previewing above it (Always on the layer closest to you). If your new movie is only 1 Frame long you can only make it last 1 frame. The colors of the text and shapes will be displayed under the preview. By double clicking any color bar you can change the that color before adding the clip to the movie. Under that you will see The X and Y positioning. You can change the physical loaction of the inserted clip by placing numirical values in Pixels into these boxes (Remember negative Numbers in the X value moves left positive numbers move right. Negative numbers in the Y value move up where positive move down.). Finally you will see the timing boxes. You have 3 choices here; The start Frame value, the End Frame Value and the Speed control. If your movie clip has 2 or more frames you can extend the length of the clip over as many frames as your current animation or stop and start it anywhere within it [The current animation]. Just select your start and finish frames while the preview window shows you what the inserted movie will look like with those settings. When you are happy with what it looks like then click the add button to add the clip to your current movie. I am combining the two terms because they are very related. Squash is the effect used in animations to show the effect of the weight of gravity on an object. Stretch is the effect used in animations to show the effect of movement against gravity on an object. A good example would be a rubber ball bouncing, when the ball hits the ground, its shape changes from a circle to an ellipse and is squashed, and as it accelerates back up into the air(bouncing) its form stretches slightly. Both squash and stretch can be created in KoolMoves be simply using the squash tool in the effects tool section. Some things to not when creating your walk cycle: 1.keep a watchful eye out when tracing your reference image, and make sure the program morphs the shapes correctly 2.remember while you walk all that you are basically doing is falling forward, its actually amazing that we don't fall flat on our faces. 3.when thinking of hair, clothes, a tail, etc....remember gravity, each step is like a mini jump, so when beginning a step the hair is or the tail is going to flow downward, because the character is jumping(remember the squash and stretch section) and the the character has fallen, or taken a step the hair is going to flow up, just think....foot up=hair down and foot down=hair up, of course you should experiment and find out exactly how much is right for you character. 4.the whole body moves when a person walks, the head, shoulders, as i said arms, chest, remember that walking actually involves the whole body 5.lastly remember that a walk cycle is a CYCLE, do not have each repeated motion different or you could end of with a limping character or worse, which might be cool, depending on what you want. Also remember since it is a cycle all you have to do is go through it once and cut and paste Video and television typically runs at 30 FPS where as film traditionally rans at 24 FPS (it can run at any speed though. Here is an interesting article about converting Film to TV if you are interested in this sort of stuff http://gregssandbox.com/gtech/movievideo/24-30fps.htm )however many animations and animation techniques involve producing animation at a lower (FPS 10 and 12) and then converting to telvision. Most Cartoons and Anime are done at 12 or 15 FPS to save money (Remember traditionally those frames were hand painted) while most High Quality Animations like Disney Feature Films are done around 24 or or 30 FPS. A good example of Frame Rate differences would be to watch the Disney Little Mermaid Movie and then watch the Disney Satarday Morning Cartoon with the same title and you will see the diffrence. The Faster the frame rate an animation has the smoother the animation (Remember the Little Mermaid example?) and the trade of is more tween cells the animation studio had to produce (making it more expensive). Now Kool Moves generates those tween frames (Just click on button to the far left of the frame opertions icon group- its the drop down with the numbers) for you so it isn't that big a deal for you to raise the frame rate but there are some things you must keep in mind. The Flash 4 Player could only achieve a max frame per seconds of 18 FPS. So first off anyone setting the Frame per second rate higher than 18 can garuntee that viewers who have not updated their player will see the Flash movie slower than it is meant to be seen. The Flash 5 player will attempt to play the higher Framerate at the expense of eating system resources. Movies with frame rate settings of 30 or higher when played on a machine with the Flash 5 player but tested on a machine with the Flash 4 player will appear speeded up drastically ( See this Tech Note: http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/player5_issues.htm ) and may cause the computer to crash or lock up. As stated in the Tech Note users should set their FPS at the true target range of 15 to 18 FPS and never over 30(- which is what video uses) unless you have a very special need to have it that high. LIP SYNCING some links to look over will explain in detail how to perform accurate lip syncing in koolmoves- http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/lipsync/lipsync.html shows basics of animation of lips via 3d http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Papers/lipsync91/lipsync91.html goes into technical explanation of lip syncing This is more along the lines of character design, but has some useful tidbits of everything so thought i would post http://www.spiraloid.com/tutorial/index.html Going to go a little into character design before going to much more into animating, because what would be the point of knowing how to animate a lip sync if you don't even have a character First some drawing techniques http://www.jdillon.net/index2.html great tips on drawing in the anime style http://picopicolina.tripod.com/anatomy.htm More To have your movie preloaded simply check the preload movie box (If you don't preload then you're movie will stream... If you stream your movie you want to take extra care about bottle-necking... I'll talk about this another time). Once you have set Kool Moves to Preload you have 2 options (represented by the radial buttons); Text Message- When this is selected you will be able to leave any text message that you want as a preloader. Simply type the preloading message into the dialog. You also can change the font size and style by hitting the options button on the right of the Text Message text input box. Movie(.FUN)- When this option for a preloader is selected then you can select a small movie as your preloader. Simply select this option the hit the ... button on the right to select the .Fun file that you wish to use as a preloader. The movie will loop until the preloading is completed. You could concievably hide (and its recomended that you do this) the fact that you are preloading a large file by putting a small game or credit trailer to the larger movie in front of it as a preloader. The last option in the dialog will allow you to select what precentage of the movie you want to preload. Remember though that what you don't preload will stream and may not synch 100% (keep this in mind with large sound files). Imagine a stack of pappers laying on your desk. The bottomost papper is at level 0 the next papper is at level 2 and the next at level 3. The higher the number there is the closer to you the level is. Now what happens is the background setting of Level 0 is the only background that gets displayed. All of the higher levels are transparent so that you can see the layer bellow it. Imagine the levels as empty slots and you can place or remove any movie you want into those slots. The load movie action places the swf into that slot while the unload movie rwemoves those from the slots. Now for the Insert Movie function... To use the Insert Movie function hit Alt F- I- Enter or select File - Insert Movie. When you do this you will see the Insert Movie interface appear. On the left will be the Files avialble. Right of that you will see the preview pane, and then right of that you will see the ADD, Cancel, and Help buttons. The first thing you will do is find the right Fun File and click on it to load it into the interface. You will see your movie on the bottom and the added movie previewing above it (Always on the layer closest to you). If your new movie is only 1 Frame long you can only make it last 1 frame. The colors of the text and shapes will be displayed under the preview. By double clicking any color bar you can change the that color before adding the clip to the movie. Under that you will see The X and Y positioning. You can change the physical loaction of the inserted clip by placing numirical values in Pixels into these boxes (Remember negative Numbers in the X value moves left positive numbers move right. Negative numbers in the Y value move up where positive move down.). Finally you will see the timing boxes. You have 3 choices here; The start Frame value, the End Frame Value and the Speed control. If your movie clip has 2 or more frames you can extend the length of the clip over as many frames as your current animation or stop and start it anywhere within it [The current animation]. Just select your start and finish frames while the preview window shows you what the inserted movie will look like with those settings. When you are happy with what it looks like then click the add button to add the clip to your current movie. I am combining the two terms because they are very related. Squash is the effect used in animations to show the effect of the weight of gravity on an object. Stretch is the effect used in animations to show the effect of movement against gravity on an object. A good example would be a rubber ball bouncing, when the ball hits the ground, its shape changes from a circle to an ellipse and is squashed, and as it accelerates back up into the air(bouncing) its form stretches slightly. Both squash and stretch can be created in KoolMoves be simply using the squash tool in the effects tool section. Some things to not when creating your walk cycle: 1.keep a watchful eye out when tracing your reference image, and make sure the program morphs the shapes correctly 2.remember while you walk all that you are basically doing is falling forward, its actually amazing that we don't fall flat on our faces. 3.when thinking of hair, clothes, a tail, etc....remember gravity, each step is like a mini jump, so when beginning a step the hair is or the tail is going to flow downward, because the character is jumping(remember the squash and stretch section) and the the character has fallen, or taken a step the hair is going to flow up, just think....foot up=hair down and foot down=hair up, of course you should experiment and find out exactly how much is right for you character. 4.the whole body moves when a person walks, the head, shoulders, as i said arms, chest, remember that walking actually involves the whole body 5.lastly remember that a walk cycle is a CYCLE, do not have each repeated motion different or you could end of with a limping character or worse, which might be cool, depending on what you want. Also remember since it is a cycle all you have to do is go through it once and cut and paste Video and television typically runs at 30 FPS where as film traditionally rans at 24 FPS (it can run at any speed though. Here is an interesting article about converting Film to TV if you are interested in this sort of stuff http://gregssandbox.com/gtech/movievideo/24-30fps.htm )however many animations and animation techniques involve producing animation at a lower (FPS 10 and 12) and then converting to telvision. Most Cartoons and Anime are done at 12 or 15 FPS to save money (Remember traditionally those frames were hand painted) while most High Quality Animations like Disney Feature Films are done around 24 or or 30 FPS. A good example of Frame Rate differences would be to watch the Disney Little Mermaid Movie and then watch the Disney Satarday Morning Cartoon with the same title and you will see the diffrence. The Faster the frame rate an animation has the smoother the animation (Remember the Little Mermaid example?) and the trade of is more tween cells the animation studio had to produce (making it more expensive). Now Kool Moves generates those tween frames (Just click on button to the far left of the frame opertions icon group- its the drop down with the numbers) for you so it isn't that big a deal for you to raise the frame rate but there are some things you must keep in mind. The Flash 4 Player could only achieve a max frame per seconds of 18 FPS. So first off anyone setting the Frame per second rate higher than 18 can garuntee that viewers who have not updated their player will see the Flash movie slower than it is meant to be seen. The Flash 5 player will attempt to play the higher Framerate at the expense of eating system resources. Movies with frame rate settings of 30 or higher when played on a machine with the Flash 5 player but tested on a machine with the Flash 4 player will appear speeded up drastically ( See this Tech Note: http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/player5_issues.htm ) and may cause the computer to crash or lock up. As stated in the Tech Note users should set their FPS at the true target range of 15 to 18 FPS and never over 30(- which is what video uses) unless you have a very special need to have it that high. LIP SYNCING some links to look over will explain in detail how to perform accurate lip syncing in koolmoves- http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/lipsync/lipsync.html shows basics of animation of lips via 3d http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Papers/lipsync91/lipsync91.html goes into technical explanation of lip syncing This is more along the lines of character design, but has some useful tidbits of everything so thought i would post http://www.spiraloid.com/tutorial/index.html Going to go a little into character design before going to much more into animating, because what would be the point of knowing how to animate a lip sync if you don't even have a character First some drawing techniques http://www.jdillon.net/index2.html great tips on drawing in the anime style http://picopicolina.tripod.com/anatomy.htm More