Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
little more interesting to navigate. If you stop and think about
some of the sites where transitions caught your eye, there
'
san
extremely high chance that those animations didn
tjusthappen
by accident. Instead, they were very well thought out, planned,
and designed in advance of the site actually being built and pro-
grammed in Flash.
Just as I stated in Chapter 2, it
'
s a good idea to plan your major
animations while you are laying out the design (and even sooner
than that when you
'
re only visualizing the design in your head).
A very big part of that planning is making sure that you have
the assets you need to make the animation happen. Without the
correct images (or video), the person that will be animating and
programming the site can
'
t create the correct movement. I am
reiterating the importance of this again in this chapter because it
does happen that animations are planned without thought to how
they will be (or if they even can be) executed with the available
assets.
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Squash, Stretch, and Anticipation
While the major movements of the transitions and animations
should absolutely be planned in the design phase of the project,
you would be okay to wait on the details of those movements.
When the design is handed over to the Flash developer, do your
best to let go a little while still staying involved. First, explain the
major movements that you have designed to the Flash developer.
After working with him or her to get the overall mechanics of the
animation created, ask him or her to tweak the movement accord-
ingly. In other words, let him or her work out and create the details
to making the animation feel as it should rather than just suddenly
moving from one point to the next. For example, you may have a
ball in your design that you want to get from one side of the screen
to the other, and the major movement you
ve decided on is boun-
cing (as opposed to rolling or being thrown). Let the Flash develo-
per know your thoughts and work with him or her on getting the
general bounce animated. Then, walk away and let him or her
apply the details such as the general animation rules of squash,
stretch, and anticipation. During all this tweaking, remember that
there could be a couple of projects where timelines/deadlines may
not allow for all the tweaks you
'
'
d like to see. If you find yourself in
that situation, try to think of which animations and tweaks are the
most important and which ones will be okay with simply moving
an object from point A to point B. The bottom line is to trust
the Flash developers with the work. After all, it
'
s what they do for a
living, right?
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