Organic animation and cinematic look

Characters

The most common problems with poorly done Flash animation are floaty timing (as if under water on the Moon) and body parts moving independently of each other, often to a point when the figure is decomposing on stage.

These problems come mostly from the lack of vision in the minds of the animators. They let the medium (Flash) guide them and dictate timing (long Tweens with 0 easing), flatness and break up.

Another common and very obvious 'feature' is vector squash & stretch, which looks terribly unnatural and plain bad.

To improve, the shift needs to happen in the head of the animator!

We need to start thinking of the characters as organic creatures, where the cutouts are only flat representations of voluminous body parts, all of them always interconnected by an internal skeleton and muscles.
This way of thinking should not be medium specific and restricted in the flat plane of the screen. It has to be spatial and 3‑dimensional, without an attempt to overdo it.
When we make this thought transition, cutouts and tweens start working for us, rather than us being passively led by tweens and cutouts.

Poses need to be defined by clear silhouettes, be specific for the given character and imply its perceived weight and interaction with its environment.
Transitions between poses should also be varied, never 'melting', never losing volume, never disassembling.

Movement has to be organic and total – based on shifting of body mass and flow of energy, line of action, etc. where no body part ever moves just by itself, i.e. a hand gesture requires a slight compensation and shift of the whole body mass.

I only break this rule if I see an opportunity for a little Chuck Jones moment – a visual gag where stillness and isolation of a gesture can be accentuated for comical effect.
Dosage, of course, is very important. Small actions require small counter balance. Subtlety comes from variation of amplitude and timing.

Personality traits

Nothing too extreme here. We're not talking about real character development in the sense of feature film, but before starting to animate, I try to think of a word or two that would define the character.
For example: curious, cheeky, fast, dreamy, friendly, easily scared, pompous, hungry, a little stupid, etc.
Nothing concrete and it doesn't need to be very prominent, but this way of thinking can add a little extra depth and subtlety to the behavior and make them appear internally motivated rather than puppets bouncing around.

It also has the potential to assist with the mood of the scene.

General pacing

The general pacing of the video comes from the VO/narration and the interaction between the adult and the kid.
The VO leads the progression of the story and visualization has to be quite literal because large deviations will not be perceived as funny by the very young audience.
The VO leads us how to progress, but it should appear as if the animals are leading and the VO is only commenting, providing information or responding. (Unless sometimes for comical effect we don't decide to break the fourth wall.)

Whenever I feel that the VO is pressing me to go too fast and I need more time to gracefully get out of a position, settle and anticipate the next movement, I cut the audio and insert enough silence to articulate the movements the way I want.

It can be done in a very non-destructive manner at the logical pauses between sentences and statements without breaking the narration and filling the silences naturally with actions or sound effects.
Final videos end up a little longer than initial animatics, but this is not a problem since the platform of distribution does not require complete uniformity.

Musical backbone

Swing bounces and rolls in the most natural way possible and it evokes natural rhythmic response from almost everyone. People start tapping their feet and kids want to dance.

Jazz works well with animation.
So as a musical foundation of the show I chose a jazzy tune.

In theory it should provide some kind of a rhythmic framework and we should always be able to fall onto the 12-beat and start a swing dance party.
The guy with the double bass is always present, silently plucking those strings outside of the frame.

In the whole history of animation there has never been a shorter, more efficient path to delivering happiness than a double-bounce walk cycle.

We should not overuse it as the show is not a musical, but it's always fun to sneak in a double-bounce once in a while.

Of course, swing cannot cover all situations. Certain moments require a dreamy flute, a sunny reggae or a dramatic flamenco.

Rhythmic and tonal progression

It is quite appropriate to think (and talk) about animation using musical metaphors.

Gags

Gags should be very simple, not overused and should surprise the kids. If there are gags everywhere all the time, they stop being funny.

Silly cartoon comedy works well for this age group. A cross-eyed face, a clumsy fall, a missed bite resulting in a small accident and silly smile.
Nothing too wild or violent, but slapstick cartoony in the Golden Age tradition and well-built so that it reads.

Kids would detect very obvious mistakes as well: Say, in the case of a very familiar animal such as dog, the narrator says '… with a tail', but the animal points toward his nose. Kids will know the animal is stupid. The animal will then correct itself and wag the tail. This will produce a laugh.

I have always been interested in animals and often watch wildlife documentaries for inspiration and pleasure.
I also have pretty good structural and dynamic knowledge of animal anatomy.
Usually I can draw any animal that I know without reference in cartoony or semi-realistic styles in any pose imaginable.

Still, apart from the most obvious ones, like cats and dogs, that I know really well, for all the rest I go to youtube and look at different videos to get a sense of the essence of some behavioral traits.

For most of the work I still use Flash CS6 (January 2019). I don't like the UX changes Adobe made to CC/Animate, how shortcuts don't work if a particular area is not focused, the performance drop and general unresponsiveness.

EDAP Tools

Electric Dog Flanimate Power Tools are crucial for being able to achieve this kind of complexity and fluidity of movement.
We have been developing the set for many years, tailoring all the tools to allow better, easier, logical handling of very complex rigs.

Principles

All principles of 2D animation should be applied to vector cutouts.
I tend to nearly always do double antics – starting softly in the direction of main movement (basically anticipating the anticipation) then antic in the opposite direction and then do the main action (toward next pose, actually toward the overshoot).
Action itself is often shorter than the antics and the overshoot, but I rarely pop.
I nearly always overshoot and often settle with a double bounce.
In most cases tend to favor the 'second' key with an ease out (+100).
If the tween is longer than 4 frames it may require a custom ease, often with specific overlapping action. This can be done by splitting the graph for the tween properties – for example, delaying rotation while moving all parts together. In this way you achieve some drag and varied speed toward the destination.

Stretch OR Squash

This is specific to vector. Only squash (scale vertically), but do not stretch. If you do it fast, the loss of volume is not noticeable. Never (except super extreme situations) squash or stretch heads.

Suqash AND Stretch

This is achieved by building tension within the pose; potential energy is compressed and prepared for release by squashing and stretching the silhouette without actually distorting any body part, just like a spring.

Hesitation and mistakes

Hesitation and 'mistakes' add subtlety and complexity to character behavior. It appears that the character acts from within.
Direct pose-to-pose along a straight path always looks terrible. Not even robotic. A robot has to have robotic character. Direct animation is just bad.

Staggers

Staggers are a very efficient way to convey strain, giggle or any other progression that requires a zig-zag graph. Stagger Tool in EDAP Tools makes staggers easy to produce.

Camera work and editing hugely contribute to the cinematic look of the show.

The establishing shots and atmospheric effects alongside with a more relaxed introductory pacing, the perceived vastness of the environment and parallax effects create the impression of much higher production value.

The camera establishes the space and then follows the character. Character should always lead and camera should always follow so that it appears natural.

I tend to do all kinds of animation tricks to the camera, such as antic and overshoot for pan, crash zooms, stagger zooms, slow-in jump slow-out (skipping the middle); long moves with ease in and out, etc.
Close-ups often have blurred background with fake bokeh to simulate shallow DOF, long focal length and wide aperture. This also brings better clarity.

I tend to reuse splashes, ripples, sparkles and so on as much as I can, but often tweak them to match perspective or timing.
Often there are also light beams and particle effects which give nice atmospheric depth and life to the scene.

Audio effects are mostly stock clips which I tend to add after finishing a section of animation, but sometimes I choose the sound first and time the action to it.

Such case can be an actual ding-dang-dong progression with audio or a 'Sque-e-eak!' made by a bird.