Proper Frame of Mind
The word "Frame" is going to be used a lot in this guide. We're going to be talking about Active Frames, Frame Advantage, animation frames, etc. etc. So without understanding what a frame is, you're going to get very lost very quickly. The easiest way to understand frames is to think about everything that happens on the screen as a cartoon. In a cartoon, you have to draw one picture at a time so that, when played in rapid succession, each picture creates an animation. Each of these pictures can be called an animation frame.
That's what happens on the screen in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Every movement a character makes, every attack they perform goes through a set of what you can call an animation frame. So some moves are made up of 20 animation frames. Some moves are made up of as many as 200 frames. This is all we are referring to when we talk about frames. And keep in mind that Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 is a game that outputs 60 frames per second. So if we say something like "there is a 6 frame window you can perform this action," that means you have 1/10th of a second to perform the action.