How to make animations feel natural
One key to making a compelling Flash movie – or any animation – is to have it feel as natural as possible.
This may sound strange because odd shapes obviously don’t move around in real life, but I try to think about how they would move if they did. One of my first professional Flash videos was for Cisco (way back in 1999), and it included a bouncing ball. Getting that ball to bounce right was a formative experience. It took absolutely forever, but made the movie “feel” right and the client loved it.
There are a few things I concentrate on to make sure things feel natural:
- When there is movement, I nearly always apply an easing effect – this gives the element a dynamic feel. In the natural world, things are either accelerating or decelerating; they are almost never moving at a constant speed from start to stop. I usually go with accelerating because it makes the video more dynamic.
- When objects in the real world stop quickly, they don’t just stop. They distort slightly and “bounce.” Usually, I’ll have the shape overshoot the destination by a hair, then rebound. If I’m really trying to make it perfect, the shape should distort slightly as well.
- When objects stop slowly, they also don’t just stop, but they slow down and then settle. As an object is in motion, gravity distorts it differently than when its stopped. It’s a two-step process, and it’s hard to get right.
- Objects don’t just appear; they fade in or blink in. Or at least there’s something that happens when they appear. This keeps things feeling subtle and natural. Things don’t just appear, but they do gradually appear.
While it’s not particularly natural, I like to make text move and pause – viewers shouldn’t have to read things while they are moving into a scene, but after they’ve arrived. In fact, I want viewers not to read things while they are moving because it’s difficult. One of my favorite things is to have text move quickly, too fast to be read, then slow waaay down for a few seconds as it’s read, and then fly quickly away.
That’s all for now!