What is the best way to Animate Illustrator file

[ezekel]

Here's the background. I have a .swf file that I grabbed from Yahoo. The swf is a Yahoo avatar that a coworker is using in our fantasy football league. As a fun joke, I wanted to take his avatar and animate it.

The .swf is currently animated, but all it does it blink and move it's eyes. What is the best way to re-animate that?

I'm guessing that I'm going to have to physically draw the avatar frame by frame similar to a flipbook to get the desired animation. Then I would scan that into Illustrator and trace it; then import that into Flash. Is that the only way or is there another way that might be easier?

 

[SatyMahajan]

Here's the background. I have a .swf file that I grabbed from Yahoo. The swf is a Yahoo avatar that a coworker is using in our fantasy football league. As a fun joke, I wanted to take his avatar and animate it.

The .swf is currently animated, but all it does it blink and move it's eyes. What is the best way to re-animate that?

I'm guessing that I'm going to have to physically draw the avatar frame by frame similar to a flipbook to get the desired animation. Then I would scan that into Illustrator and trace it; then import that into Flash. Is that the only way or is there another way that might be easier?

Adobe After Effects or Apple Motion

 

[ezekel]

with the physical drawing right?

 

[SatyMahajan]

with the physical drawing right?

Here's what I'd do:

1. Screen capture a frame of the swf
2. Use illustrator to create a vector drawing of the character you want to animate.
3. Load the Illustrator file into After Effects and use the puppet tool and/or keyframes to manipulate.

 

[opeter]

For animating vector files, I would use one of the following tools:
- Adobe Flash
- SwishMax
- Toon Boom Studio or Animate
- SmithMicro Anime Studio Pro.

Opensource alternative is called Synfig.

Of course, there is Adobe After Effects, but the thing is simply damn too expensive. Maybe if you would buy older version trough eBay, but beware, Intel Macs are supported only from version CS3 and above.