TEH_CODERER
GENERAL CHARACTER BUILDING
create a front / back and side view of your character.
one side view can be flipped to create the other side view.
the back view can be created after the front has been completed with the deletion of the face objects and some tweaking.
Create all the elements on layers or as objects within flash per say so you can animated them easier.
Build your character in a vector program so it can be scaled without pixel fuss
there is a free vector program on the net and theres a few so try them all out.
It looks like your already using a vector package.
Ignore adding any drop shadows or effects until you have a decent character, these elements are trivial and can cause problems when exporting the character with clean alpha channels, there is tonnes more to do yet
TALKING : mouth bits
if the character is going to talk from a front on perspective, think of all the vowel looking shapes your mouth makes including a tight lipped shape and the m letter shape.
e / p / three / t / c / z can all be used for the one shape
lets compare these phonetically
eee
pee
three
tee
cee
zee (us pronoucniation)
EYES
Pupils and eyeballs plus eyelids are all separate objects, it allows for very easy animation later
if they are on sep. layers as well as the order they are presented, thinking in a dimension from back to front order.
scaling of the pupil instead of recreating it is far easier then building seperate eye sizes for each animation
HANDS
create an open hand side and front view
the front view will double as a back view when flipped over.
an open hand can be converted into a fist fairly easily
you can create a whole bunch of different positions here
only create one hand for both sides, duplicate and flip when required.
BLACK OUTLINES
If you want to export all the objects and use black as your alpha channel, make sure your black outline is dark but not perfect black
SHADING
these elements are best created as separate layers and not part of the character.
it allows for much better shadow animations later on
I usually make these on the fly for each scene as required.
OBJECTS
create as many objects as you want the character to have
dont create any gaps or hidden areas in the characters objects
rely on the masking ability to place objects behind each other
rely on seperate masking shapes later on as you go.
CENTRE POINTS
arms legs heads will all have an offset centre point so they pivot around the correct area to give the illusion they are connected. offset these and test them all before moving on to animation.
that covers some basics in building it but doesnt go into animation
check out my avatar as an indication of these principles
