I feel like an asshole now. Standing up all snooty and snarky debunking what people say about Wakfu and izmarvelous goes out of his way to post evidence that for something everyone else already believed.
Ladies and Gentleman, the same animation software.
If anyone is in doubt…
Wakfu is the reason why I cock an eye at anyone who says that something is lower quality cause it’s animated in flash, and also is a great inspiration for what the program can do (and why, in spite of its flaws, I still use it.)
Low quality animation is over-tweened and often lacks proper easing. That can be done in flash, toonboom, pretty much any 2D animation software. Don’t say something is low quality because it’s made in flash when you mean it’s low quality because of shit tweening.
I hate to be that guy but…This Gif doesn’t prove anything.
That gif only proves the frames were pulled together in Flash as a movie clip. But it still doesn’t prove the animation was done in exclusively in flash. I mean before I would praise Wakfu for being “animated in Flash” but now that i understand how programs works I can’t help but play Rubilax’s advocate with this and be just a little skeptical.
All I see from that gif is a movie clip set on a tween to move. There are no individual keyframes shown (which you wouldn’t want anyway if you don’t want a cluttered workspace. You’d group that stuff). The purple frames indicate anything that’s tweened. So really when you observer them you can easily recognize that all these keyframes are just camera movements with another layer of effects (layer YugeO) coming in at 120 that is also a movie clip.
Point is these layers with few keyframes could be two things.
A movie clip (or graphic) holding assets drawn in Flash or
A movie clip (or graphic) holding imported assets drawn in another program. An image sequence.
Seeing what is actually inside those movie clips would be proof that Wakfu is animated in Flash but what’s shown isn’t proof.
It’s the same thing with After Effects. It’s one thing to say that something was done native IN after effects but anyone who’s ever used After Effects as a drawing tool knows how much easier it is to use After Effects as what it is. A Compositor. I think it would be more accurate to say that these shots were possibly rendered with Flash but that gif doesn’t show that it was indeed “animated” with Flash.
Whereas I see a shows like Johnny Test and The Nutshack and because of how the lines on the characters look, i can believe that it was both animated and rendered in Flash.
If you ever worked in Flash you’ve seen how Flash creates lines with is tools but then when you look at a normal still shot from Wakfu
It’s not as obvious to the point where even IF the core animation was done in flash, you could argue that it was cleaned up before or after it was shown on television.
I’m sorry for being such a Debby Downer. It’s just when I see this
I don’t think “Wow so this is what Flash can really do!”
I think “This would be considerably painful for a person or even a team of people to do animate something like Flash. I really hope they pulled external assets and resources or this would literally be hell.”
So, you can blame the gif on me. It was the view that, within the file, looked most like the original, so that’s what I gif’d.
I’m not a member of the animation team so I fully admit I might be talking out of my ass, but, based on my discussions with them, and what I’ve seen in the work files, all of the characters and props are built in Flash, including the FX.
It’s true that the backgrounds are often painted or rendered in other programs, and I think there are some compositing tools used on some shots (maybe?) but I don’t know the specifics of that. I’m also not the biggest Flash expert, but I did dig into the file of this shot, and, well…
Like I said, I’m not an expert, but…
To me, it looks like it’s a group of Flash shapes.
Same for the head and other parts.
Changed the color of some of the lines to show they’re editable vector shapes. If there is another file or program that these lines are imported from, I can’t find it anywhere in the work process.
I fully admit that there could be magic going on that I’m not aware of because - yeah, I’m not an animator and I’m not a Flash expert. I saw someone in the comments saying that special plugins were used, but I can open these files on my vanilla copy of Flash with no errors. Maybe that proves jack, but I’ve never known an Adobe product to happily open files that require plugins without complaint.
I’ve seen the build files of the characters that include mouth shapes and hands and turnarounds, etc. They’re all Flash. And there’s just not a lot of files in the workflow that aren’t from Flash.
Pick a nose, any nose
Oh yeah, Wakfu does use traditionally drawn keyframes for guides, but they look like this:
In conclusion: I’m not an animator, just a community manager who saw this post and though that some people would like a glimpse into the workflow of the series (and maybe brag a little because I love my job and the series we make and our artists are fuuuuckin’ incredible at their jobs). If this was a false flag op to try to get me to show more of the workflow, well… it worked, and good job, but this is as far as I can go. If you have other theories about how the series isn’t primarily animated in Flash, you’ll have to ask someone who knows what they’re talking about (like Tot or Xa) for the next debunking. ^^
I hope this was interesting, at least! =D
Well…damn
Accepted as evidence. No you’re right. Seeing this closer inside I can see those line behaviors I was mentioning before. You can also see all of the shape assets used as well.
Okay man now I’m less skeptical. All I was saying before was I didn’t think what was presented proved anything so there was lacking doubt but now I’m just impressed. (Still worried about the animators though. This just makes me appreciate them more and offer to buy them a coffee or something.)
