Watch and Learn Illustrator!

1 - Welcome (Running Time - 2:13)
In this video, Craig welcomes you to the training course and offers you a little challenge before you get started.

2 - Animation Principles (Running Time - 13:27)
There are 12 basic principles of animation that all good animators must understand and appreciate in order to create effective and entertaining cartoons. This video defines and explores each of these basic principles.

3 -Bouncing Ball (Running Time - 12:25)
In this video, Craig walks you through the creation of a simple bouncing ball animation that ignores all of the animation principles discussed in the previous video. The resulting animation is used to emphasize the importance of these principles.

4 - Easing (Running Time - 16:06)
One of the animation principles we discussed earlier was "Slow In and Slow Out". This principle involves adjusting the speed of an animation to make it more realistic. In this video, we'll apply this principle to our bouncing ball animation in order to make it a little more appealing and realistic.

5 - Squash and Stretch (Running Time - 16:40)
In order to give our bouncing ball a little more depth and substance, we're going to stretch it out when it's moving quickly and squash it when it hits the ground. In this video, Craig will show you how.

6 - Anticipation and Follow Through (Running Time - 29:07)
When a baseball player swings a bat, before the swing actually begins, you'll see him rear back a little bit. This is called anticipation. In this video, Craig will demonstrate this concept of anticipation with a jumping ball animation. And then, once the ball lands, Craig will demonstrate the concept of Follow Through.

7 - Storyboarding (Running Time - 6:08)
Meticulous planning is necessary in animation if you want to create an efficient workflow, and there's no better way to plan out your cartoon than by creating a storyboard. A storyboard is kind of a rough draft that allows you to plan out and refine your ideas before you actually start creating your cartoon in Flash.

8 -Character Creation (Running Time - 6:36)
In this video, Craig explains the basics of character creation and explores what makes a character work.

9 - Drawing Characters - Part 1 (Running Time - 13:03)
In this video, we'll import a scanned image of our character and we'll get started tracing over it using Flash's drawing tools.

10 - Drawing Characters - Part 2 (Running Time - 13:21)
In this video, Craig traces over the head and the eyes of the robot character that's going to be used for the project cartoon.

11 -Drawing Characters - Part 3 (Running Time - 18:06)
In this video, Craig continues drawing the robot character as he explains the importance of reusing graphic elements whenever possible.

12 - Drawing Characters - Part 4 (Running Time - 6:07)
This video concludes the drawing section as Craig draws in the foot of the robot character.

13 - Coloring Your Character (Running Time - 11:01)
In this video, Craig demonstrates the basics of coloring in your character in Flash.

14 - Shading Your Character (Running Time - 14:30)
Depending on the style you're going for in your cartoon, you might want to add some shading to your characters to give them a sense of depth. In this video, Craig demonstrates some useful techniques as he adds shading to the robot character.

15 - Preparing Characters for Animation (Running Time - 26:01)
Now that we've finished drawing our character, it's time to finish assembling him and preparing him for animation. In this video, Craig will share with you some tips for arranging your characters many parts in such a way as to make animating him a no-brainer.

16 - Drawing Tips (Running Time - 23:59)
In this video, Craig illustrates a telephone for the project cartoon, and as he does so, he demonstrates a few drawing tips that will help you improve your drawing efficiency.

17 - Setting the Scene (Running Time - 17:36)
Now that most of our drawing is completed, we can start to set up the stage for animation. In this video, Craig takes all of his illustrated components and begins to arrange them in preparation for animation.

18 - Arranging the Props (Running Time - 12:42)
In this video, Craig continues to set up the scene for animation by setting the props on the stage and making a few size adjustments.

19 - Arranging the Character (Running Time - 8:27)
With our background and our props in place, it's time to break our character apart and arrange him into his starting position for the cartoon.

20 - Animating the Title Screen (Running Time - 14:53)
Every cartoon needs a title, and in this video, Craig is going to show you how to fade in a title screen and then fade it back out to reveal the beginning of your cartoon.

21 - Slow Camera Pan (Running Time - 29:03)
Now we're getting into the fun stuff! With our title screen out of the way, Craig sets the scene by creating a camera pan animation, where the "camera" appears to move downwards while shifting focus from the background to the foreground.

22 - Looping Animations (Running Time - 5:54)
With movie clip symbols, it's very easy to create simple looping animations for repetitive actions. In this video, Craig adds a very subtle looping animation of a relaxed forearm slowly rocking back and forth.

23 - Creating Sound Clips (Running Time - 7:31)
In case you don't already have your own sound recording/editing software, Craig will show you where you can find a very powerful program for FREE, and then he'll show you briefly how to use it to create recordings for your cartoon.

24 - Importing Sounds (Running Time - 5:55)
Once you create your sounds, you've got to have some way to pull them into your Flash file so you can start animating. In this video, Craig will import the wav files he recorded for his cartoon into the cartoon Flash file.

25 - Adding Narration (Running Time - 11:20)
Our project cartoon is going to have some voice-over narration in it, and in this video, Craig will show you the basics of importing the sound files for the narration, editing the sound compression settings for better quality, and adding the sounds to the timeline.

26 - Graphic Symbols (Running Time - 28:58)
In this video, as Craig prepares the robot's eyes to blink, he teaches you about a very powerful feature of graphic symbols that allows you to create animations much more efficiently.

27 - Motion Blur Pan (Running Time - 29:08)
In this video, we need to sweep the "camera" to the right to focus on something else, and using the blur filter that now comes with Flash Professional 8, we'll also be able to add a motion blur that gives our sweeping camera a more realistic feel.

28 - Animating the Phone (Running Time - 13:47)
In this cartoon, we have a ringing phone, and in order to make the cartoon more interesting, we're going to animate the phone receiver bouncing around on the cradle. In this video, Craig will show you how.

29 - Adjust Sound Volumes (Running Time - 14:57)
If you've got two sounds playing in your timeline at the same time, they might start to compete with each other. If this happens, then it's helpful to know how to adjust the volume for a specific sound. In this video, Craig will show you how to lower the volume of a ringing phone so that it doesn't compete with the voice of the narrator.

30 - Drawing the Side View - Part 1 (Running Time - 12:08)
So far, we've only drawn our main character from the front view, but now we want to animate him walking to the right, so in this video, Craig is going to demonstrate some helpful tips for redrawing your character from a side view.

31 - Drawing the Side View - Part 2 (Running Time - 10:45)
In this video, Craig finishes drawing our character from the side by redrawing the head.

32 - Walk Cycle - Part 1 (Running Time - 10:55)
In this video, we'll get started with the highly anticipated walk cycle by arranging the bits and pieces of our character in the first extreme pose.

33 - Walk Cycle - Part 2 (Running Time - 14:32)
In this video, We'll continue the walk cycle by creating a few more extreme positions, or keyframes.

34 - Walk Cycle - Part 3 (Running Time - 7:12)
In this video, we'll focus on moving the arms into the correct positions for the walk cycle.

35 - Walk Cycle - Part 4 (Running Time - 16:24)
In this video, Craig continues his demonstration of the walk cycle by starting to fill in some of the in-between frames.

36 - Walk Cycle - Part 5 (Running Time - 15:53)
This video continues our discussion of the walk cycle by filling in more of the in-between frames.

37 - Walk Cycle - Part 6 (Running Time - 20:36)
In this video, Craig finally finishes putting the walk cycle together and then tests it to make sure it looks okay.

38 - Implementing the Walk (Running Time - 22:27)
So far, we've just put our walk cycle into a graphic symbol, but we haven't injected it into our cartoon yet. In this video, Craig will show you how.

39 - Slowing Down the Walk (Running Time - 8:13)
After spending all that time on the walk cycle, once we implemented it, we discovered that it was just too fast. So in this video, Craig will demonstrate how we can slow it down a little bit.

40 - Close-up Shots (Running Time - 20:33)
When you do a close-up shot, you don't always have to include every part of every character or object that's on the stage. In this video, Craig will demonstrate a close-up where we only use our character's arm instead of his whole body.

41 - Picking Up the Phone (Running Time - 14:46)
In this video, Craig walks you through an animation of our main character picking up a telephone receiver and lifting it up to his ear.

42 - Preparing the Mouth (Running Time - 20:28)
If we're going to animate our character's mouth as he speaks, we first need to do a few things to prepare the character's mouth and head, and in this video, Craig will walk you through this setup.

43 - Lip-syncing Your Characters (Running Time - 11:43)
With the character's head and mouth prepared, in this video, Craig demonstrates how to move the mouth in time with the character's words in order to make it appear that the character is speaking.

44 - The Payoff (Running Time - 15:12)
The "payoff" in a story or animation is the moment where everything you've been setting up suddenly comes to fruition. In this video, Craig animates the payoff of this particular cartoon, where a wrecking ball flies across the screen and takes the character out.

45 - Wrapping it Up (Running Time - 24:57)
In this final video, Craig animates the end credits for the cartoon and adds a couple of finishing touches.

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