[Animation] Hybrid style test

I've finally had time to resume a pet project of mine, Crusaders. Today I made this section of the animation, showing a character jumping into the stage and sliding along the ground. The animation style for this was primarily symbol and tween based. Some people would argue that this style of animation is lazy and ineffective, so I've tried to demonstrate how it can be used effectively.

I found the key to making successful tween based animation is to break up the motion as much as possible by adding secondary animation on things like the hair. Even offsetting these by one frame (which is what I did for the hair in some of this clip) stops the movement from all ending at once, and makes things seem a bit less robotic.

Another thing I found is to make extensive use of the smooth in and smooth out features that can be used on classic tweens in Flash. These stop the motion from moving at a constant pace, and again helps to break up the mechanical vibe that some tween based animation can give off.

The final technique is to try and change symbold frequently. Sticking to one angle of a head, for example, makes the shape recognisable and the viewer quickly identifies it as a separate object.

With these three techniques, the rest is similat to regular animation, making use of anticipation (in this case the jump onto screen) the action (the slide) and the reaction (secondary movement on the hair and tail)