Animate a Ninja!

What's so great about ninjas? Aren't they usually quiet and just sitting in trees eating bamboo sandwiches that their ninja wives packed them for lunch? True... Except when its time to jump around and kick and punch and slice up stuff and generally go berserk. Fortunately for us, safe at home, that flurry of action makes a for great movement study. And in a way, we animators, are the ninjas of the 21rst century. Albeit, dorks too.

This Flash tutorial is a whooping 4 hours, but only $15. And aside from just teaching various types of movement, there's also some clever illustration techniques that will save time drawing new positions (and new frames) for your ninja. There is NOT much motion tweening to this tutorial series. The animation is a die-hard frame-by-framer. So don't think you can get away with hitting the Tween button. Do that, and you'll lose a hand.

Also discussed are some export techniques for getting that pur-dy animation to Quicktime.

Full details and the finished animation created during the lesson, are here... Animate a Ninja!