Do animators animate frame by frame?

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This has been in my mind for quite a while now since being a brony. Do the animators have to animate ever single frame? because that would take for ever. Or do they use keyframes? I know they use adobe flash for mlp but how

[Marcato 2,143]

This has been in my mind for quite a while now since being a brony. Do the animators have to animate ever single frame? because that would take for ever. Or do they use keyframes? I know they use adobe flash for mlp but how

Well adobe flash primarily uses Keyframes, the animators of MLP:FiM no doubt use key frames plenty of times. In fact a majority of the movement is likely done via keyframing. 

 

However there are some things that require actual frame-by-frame animation, such as Celestia and Luna's mane. (Of course they just make a looping animation for that one.) 

 

But take a look at this, 

 

http://technologyflash.net/SWF/TiaTalkandTurnTest.swf

 

This is an animation I whipped up that only uses keyframing. So even that looks fairly similar to how the show looks. Adobe flash is an amazing program and makes things much faster to work with. 

Edited June 3, 2013 by Silver Marcato

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thx for the info whenever/however i get hold of the software i need to try some animation. Once i get flash im gonna look uo some tutorials