Things already moving to next movement

[Kitsuneaura 1]

I am new to animation as a whole and I really liked this program but I have two issues. The first on is, I tried to make a video of me slaying a zombie with a diamond sword, then the zombie falling down. However, in the first bit, the zombie starts falling before I made it, so it has already fallen backward out of the sword's reach. The second one is, the zombie is supposed to fall then catch fire, however I can't make the fire appear later. Once I add fire, it is there from the first frame. How do I fix this?

[Emaniplex 6.3k]

16 minutes ago, Kitsuneaura said:

The first on is, I tried to make a video of me slaying a zombie with a diamond sword,

I never would've guessed.  

Anyway, animation, editing, and audio software all adhere to a Timeline in which events happen in a sequence and persist in their given times. This is achieved by setting Keyframes, but mostly just in animation and editing software.

A Keyframe is like setting a pose on a Character (or Character Part) for any given moment in your animation. Put simply, you must scroll through your animation and find how the Keyframes are laid out on the Timeline in order to correct it so that the zombie is standing up at, say, second five and just beginning to fall down at second six.

Imagine you have a notch and that when you push it forward, a bunch of puppets move into poses that you've set for them. They might crouch at second one, stand at second two, and jump into the air at second three. If you pull the switch backward, they'll revert back to crouching.

Again, you have to find the moment in time where the zombie needs to be standing and adjust it using Keyframes. I hope that helps.

[GbStudio 1.6k]

Spoiler

 

You need to make a keyframe showing when It is about to move and one where it moved to the spot.

I would recommend this series. It is outdated but the program is pretty easy to find your way around. Almost every veteran animator here watched his tutorials

For the particles. You need to edit the settings. Unselect the top button saying something like "Always Spawning Particles"

After that everytime you make a keyframe, it will spawn the particles.

Edit: After watching it, I realized that the hide keyframes button isn't in the new version. Would've been useful

 

See reply below

Edited October 15, 2016 by GbStudio

[DaggerTDX 28]

This is literally the exact same as my first animation...

I had the same problems too. I didn't post this, right?