First, allow me to introduce myself as a new member, than you know better about me : My name is Joël, I'm French, I live in Berlin / Germany and I work as script writer for television (mostly cartoon series and pre-school programs)...
I want to use Coldstone to build not only games but also to create interactive universes. I think Coldstone is perfect for example to create games for kids where they could discover life in a medieval castle or in a Pirates town... etc... So this is my main project at the moment, starting with an interactive journey through a Pirates island...
I wanted also to post here some tips from my experience :
- To create 2D animations (effects, flames, lights... etc...), I find it very easy to do it in Flash, which is a REAL and PRO animation tool... Though you'll have to import .png to keep your transparency or use photoshop after to generate a transparency... Of course, you need to know flash first...
- Also, Flash can be used to create your videos : You import all the elements you want to animate in your video and use Flash as an animtaion composer... The good thing is that, there, you'll be abble to add effects, graphics and even photos or real video... And you easily export a movie... And you can create quite sophisticated video there (for example : start your video with a huge zoom out from the actual position of your character : allways impressive)
- The animation editor in coldstone is only an Xsheet (exposure sheet), and a very basic one... To create animations with more than one character (from characters you already animated) or with additive features (like an effect on a previously animated character : exemple : a character running out of a fire, with his clothes in fire), you need to import these animations in a tool where you'll be abble to use different layers with different layouts and timelines... Same thing, Flash or After effect can be very efficient there...
- In the animation editor, thought, there's something fun that can be done : compose new animations with small segments of different existing animation... Remember, Animation is Key frames and as far as you get all your key frames, you have your movement... So I could easily create a new animation of the hero in the demo, where he walks and stop to look around, suspicious, by selecting walk, than stop, than block NE and block NW... I event made characters changing into others, characters walking backward, spining before to explose... etc... I know, it's very basic but if you think about you'll enrich your animations (you don't need to have only "walking around" characters...
- For those who are starting animating and want to know more about Animation, All books by Preston Blair are perfect...
Ok, that's it... Just few ideas... Maybe totally useless for everybody... Well, you never know...
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