Action-heavy animation question

[Matsuemon]

Hey guys,
I've been thinking about some certain actions I want my characters to perform in AS Pro, and because of the limitations of 2D software (not just AS but any 2D program), I'm seeing it will be hard to produce certain actions. For example, if I want my character to throw a punch (which crosses his body in an axis we can't really animate in) it would be hard to do. Also, if he's got his arm held up and cocked back ready to punch, his forearm would need to overlap (be in front of) his upper arm, which again isn't possible with 2D. However couldn't I do it one of two ways:

1) Draw the punch frame by frame and just use actions/switch layers to animate it. or

2) Adjust the points and morph the arm to make it appear closer or farther away from the camera as it crosses the body?

I'm very curious what everyone else is doing for that kind of animation, or even if there IS anyone doing that kind of action stuff with AS. Look forward to hearing your thoughts

[slowtiger]

Animation like this is best done in a frame-by-frame fashion. Wether you do that on paper and scan it in, or in a bitmap program like Photoshop, or draw it in AS - it would be easiest to put those few frames into a switch layer.

[Matsuemon]

Animation like this is best done in a frame-by-frame fashion. Wether you do that on paper and scan it in, or in a bitmap program like Photoshop, or draw it in AS - it would be easiest to put those few frames into a switch layer.

Hey thanks for the info, Tiger. I think I agree. If I drew the frames in Photoshop, for example, and imported them into AS, could I use the pictures as is, or would I have to trace them and color them in AS? I'm not quite familiar enough with image files to know if you can use them in switch layers or not.

Thanks again for your help

--Jason

[madrobot]

Storyboard your stuff out thoroughly first so that you only make exactly what you need.

[Mikdog]

Ugh. I started drawing a little pic to demonstrate its not that hard to do what you're explaining then I started thinking about the details. Frame by frame is easier though AS has the ability to animate layer positioning in the stack over time. So you can have layers go under and above other layers in the timeline if that's what you're concerned about.

[crsP]

HUH?! What do you mean the limitations of 2d programs? Obviously if you try to animate a sequence like this in a 'cutout' style, you will run into problems. Duh. But how can you make a claim that you can't animate something like this in all 2d apps?