easiest PROG to use in MAKING ANIMATED STICK FIGURES ?

i have a pc. i plan to put pictures from people as the faces, the rest of the body will be stick figure type stuff i've drawn.

yes i have a scanner if that helps. colors are a plus. or ill just use crayons if i can scan pictures and make animations from them.

 

I used to use Macromedia Flash programs... if you get a hang of it, it's quite easy

 

how simple is it to figure out ?

 

which is better for me to use ? i want to draw the pictures, scan them, and insert the jpg's into the program, have it move around n **** .

either macromedia flash
macromedia dreamweaver
OR macromedia fireworks 8 ?

 

If you are going to do stick animation, you will have to familiarize yourself with the Line Tool, Pen Tool (if not using flash) and Sub Selection Tool, and Tweening. There should be good tutorials on all those. I personally would recommend the video tutorials by TotalTraining, although those are a bit pricy.

Depending on the length of your animations, and your intended audience, there are a number of choices for programs. If you are going to make short (5-10 second ish) animation, you might be better off doing an animated GIF in Fireworks or Photoshop or Imageready. Anything longer than that would be better made in Flash.

I would strongly recommend drawing the stick bodies in the animation application itself, as that would give you full power for path editing and tweening.

 

the animation is to be made in mind for a child 3yrs of age. the images will be very simple, except for using a picture as one of the stick figures face.

there are only 2 characters, and several scenes. im thinking about 20-30 seconds. can i still go with image ready ? in this situation would flash be more beneficial ? i have to figure out the program btw. and google sketchup IMO was ****ing easy to use.

the image ready comes with photoshop ... so am i to use photoshop in creating the images ?

or better to negate this and go with flash, i do want the file to go on loop at least 3 times

 

is so... then i think Fireworks will do the trick or image ready...
but of course flash can do the animation for you too.... even better actually...
but personally, i will use fireworks for small n simple animation, n i use flash for more complicated movement which use more frames to make smooth movement...

 

AHHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA. I loved doing these. Here's a free one that I use. It's FREE, SAFE, and really fun to use.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/stickfigure.html

 

does this app , allow for crayon color scheme ? import pictures, make a background etc ? itll all be stick figure world type drawings

 

The thread is moved to the Software section.

 

TC I just checked anndd.. yes you can make your stickman a certain colour and load a background. Pretty neat