Cut Out Animation

Angel Cut Out Animation

To begin my animation, I first had my image taken of my full body so that when I imported it into Adobe Photoshop CC, I could cut out the outline of my body, and then disassemble each part so I could use it to move each part individually in Adobe Flash CC. However it was a much more difficult process as I had cut out each part individually and make a new file to be pasted into the new file. This was a long process as I had to make sure to remove the background after I had pasted it into the new file, before I saved it as a 'PNG' file otherwise when I imported into Adobe Flash CC the background would remain around the image. This was one of the faults I had which limited my time with my animation, as I had to go through every body part again and remove the background before saving it as a 'PNG'. I cut out the body and the individual body parts I used the polygonal lasso tool. A tip which I found useful was that it was best to cut out certain sections at a time when cutting out the full body as it reduced the chances of making a mistake and having to redo the whole cutting process again. 

After I finished cutting out the body parts, I imported the pictures from the library in Adobe Flash CC. These were then located on the sidebar to which I had to create 6 layers for each of the individual body parts but also another layer for the background. However I decided on creating a total of 8 layers as I had two backgrounds, one for the sky background and one for my originally drawn wings for my animation. Then, I named each layer after a certain body part as well as the background layers to avoid confusion when I was in the process of creating my animation. After, I placed each of the images into the correct layers according to the labels, making sure the bottom layers were the two background layers, the first background being the very bottom for the sky background, and the second background second from the bottom for the wings. I resized the body parts and assembled them so they looked like the original full body image in the centre of the screen. 

I proceeded to add a motion tween to both of my two selected body parts which were the left and right arm. But to add a motion tween both of these parts had to be converted into a symbol first. After they had become symbols I then extended the frames to where I wanted the motion tween to stop, and moved the body parts. Then I extended the other layers to the same amount of frames, so the parts are stationary whilst the specific parts move. After I created a blank keyframe and removed the motion tween, so then I could replace the arms with another image over the top. I used the onion skin tool to allow me to see what I had done in previous frames of my animation. The overall motion tween caused my arms to create an arc effect related to the 12 Principles of Animation. 

For my final finishes, I inserted the sky background by retrieving an image from Google, and saving it before importing it Adobe Flash CC. Then I dragged the image to the background layer and resized it to my preferences. Whilst for the second background layer I drew a wing on one side of my top body, and copied the image and pasted the image so I could move it to the other side. Then I flipped the drawn wing so that it was symmetrical to the other wing.