More than meets the eye
The first traditional animation I completed, back in 1986, was a pencil test on animation paper and photographed using a Forox camera. The animation was to be shot on threes. This worked out to 8 frames per second. The panning and any other camera movement was done using mathematical calculations. So, a shot sheet was critical. We received instruction from an animator, Chuck Eyler, who was working at Lucas Studios at that time. He was working on "Howard the Duck" at the time.
My first computer animation was done in Macromedia Director for Computer Curriculum Corporation, which later became NCS Learn. Then Flash came along which was great for small animation file sizes. GIF Builder was great for assembling rasterized graphics into an animation.
Flash animation to HTML 5
To play Flash animations on later platforms, Flash aninations were saved as an HTML 5 file using the Toolkit for CreateJS extension. I would create demonstrations for my Flash Animation students. I wanted to highlight the use of symbols and animation presets. GIF symbols could also be used for animation with the use of a motion path. Registration points for joints could be used for walk cycles.
Assets could also be created in Adobe Illustrator and imported into Flash.
Gif Animation
GIF animations were utilized for the Knowledge Factory Educational software company., Animations were created in Macromedia Director and exported to GIF Animator.
Game Animation
Sprite animation was originally created in Deluxe Animator (DA) for SEGA of America. We used a limited palette, eight colors to be exact. They were created on the MS DOS platform. The game was released on time but it didn't do well financially. Animations could be recreated in later years by importing PICTS, exported from Deluxe Animator, into Photoshop and exported as a GIF animation.
Flash animation
Flash animation utilized action script to control the animation. The client supplied some of the assets, two of the figures and the calculator. The graphics I created needed to stylistically match the provided assets. All file size restrictions were met.