Hey Dana! I've done a bit of work on my own film and projects by compositing traditional with Flash, so maybe I can help. This is a bit technical and I don't have the software in front of me so just bear with me while I ramble a bit.

 

When you open your Flash project, set it to the same framerate that you're working with in your hand-drawn animation. Then you can animate your bushes or whatever assets you need with no background, and then "Publish" it to a .SWF file, -OR- export it to an image sequence, such as PNG, that will include transparency. I'll get back to this part shortly.

 

If you need to see your hand-drawn work in order to animate over top of it, at least in my experience you'll need to get your hand-drawn animation into a .FLV video format first. Most programs I've worked with for shooting hand-drawn animation will make it into a Quicktime .MOV file. To turn it into an FLV, bring it into After Effects and export it using the Render Queue into an FLV file. Then you should be able to bring that into your Flash project by making a new layer in Flash with a single keyframe that lasts as long as you need it, then importing the FLV as (if I recall correctly) an embedded movie, I believe? You can google "Flash import FLV" or something if I'm wrong on that. Anyway you should then have a layer in Flash with your hand-drawn animation that you can animate right over top of for reference. [... Now, going by what Patrick said above, maybe you don't need to make it an FLV if you're using CS3, and can just import it as an embedded SWF. Not familiar with that]

 

Anyway, once you get your bushes and other Flash assets animated and exported into an SWF file or an image sequence, go back to After Effects and compile everything there. Make sure (again) that you have your project set to the correct framerate, and import your hand-drawn work as a regular image sequence or movie file, and then import your new Flash assets as whatever you exported it to... either an image sequence or an SWF file should work. If it's an SWF then it will come in as a looping vector animation at whatever dimensions you had in your Flash project's Document settings. If you're going to work more with it in After Effects, you can click the star-like * checkbox in the After Effects layer for that SWF to have it recognize the vector quality so you can, for example, zoom or enlarge those assets without degrading the quality.

 

Finally, export everything to a single video file again using the Render Queue. Whew! It's a bit complicated but once you learn it, it's very useful. Let me know if this is confusing or anything!

 

- Ben Halstead

halsteadart@gmail.com

This post was edited by Ben Halstead at November 20, 2011 11:08:31 PM PST

Hey Britt! I was just reading some of these posts and thought I'd add two points of advice. First of all, I wouldn't worry about graduating at age 27. I'm 27 and graduating this year, and trust me, it's silly to have regrets about it. 27 is still plenty young, and you do end up with a nice broad education and a more independent spirit. So just do what your heart tells you and don't worry about the number next to your age! Second, I don't want to influence your choice of schools or anything, as there are many great animation programs out there; certainly Calarts would be awesome! But especially since you're already in Michigan, consider dropping by the College for Creative Studies in Detroit sometime. Our animation program had a big makeover recently (personally I think it's pretty top-quality now, but that's just my opinion :P), and if nothing else, you can check out the facilities or even sit in on an animation class to get a better feel for whether or not you want to go to animation school.

Yeah, that part is unfortunate. I paid for the cheapest upgrade and I still can't do HD or have more than 300 frames per animation. But since I'm just using it for rough animation anyway, it's been proving its worth.

Don't forget to check out DigiCel's FlipBook, found here: http://www.digicelinc.com/ It's a great 2D "tradigital" animation program that basically imitates the paper and light table approach in almost every way. They also have a free trial version.

Sure thing, James! Glad you like it. At some point I'll have to see if I can get it onto the Norman Database, found here: http://www.romanim.com/norman_database.php ...Although those rigs all have added features. I was going for a kind of bare-bones rig, so it might not belong there.