Hi Guys
My first post here, great forum.
I am into my second year of a multimedia course and
want to get into some animation.
I have had a little browse around at Toon Boom, and was wondering
if this was the best program for cartoon animation on the web or
should i stick with flash?
are there any other programs that do a better job?
Also was wondering if there is a program that lets you view a 'swf'
file and see how they went about creating the animation?
This would be a great help to a beginner like myself, as i am having
a hard time finding good tutorials and my course isnt that good
with teaching me what i *want* to learn :(
Next year i am looking at a 3d course using MAYA, but havent looked
at any 3d animating programs as of yet.
Thanks for any help.
Harlequin
There are swf decompilers out there but their use is frowned on because of the threat of ripping someone elses hard work. Many sites like Flashkit and Were-here offer open source clips that are free for you to take and modify. And the fla file is made available for them so their is no need to decompile.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
lol I say ditch em both and get Moho (no offense to Flash and/or Toonboom users).
http://www.lostmarble.com
What is Moho you ask?
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/index.shtml
What can it do?
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/features/index.shtml
Here's some samples:
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/gallery/index.shtml
Spoooze!
Hey I think Spooze gets a commission on each sale of Moho. Just joking, checked it out about three years ago and wasn't that impressed, but maybe it's changed, will have to give it another test drive if it will work on my old computer. Have also played with ToonBoom, but I just can't get used to the verticle timeline. Too old to learn new tricks.
I am an old Flash addict...shoot me. It's what I am used to.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
if this was the best program for cartoon animation on the web or
should i stick with flash?
are there any other programs that do a better job?
If you are looking for web delivery, there is no better program than Flash right now. It provides small, streaming files, that are scalable. I am so sick of looking at 2 inch by 2 inch animations that take 4 hours to download. Sure you have absolute control over framerate even with cpu load if you do a quicktime, or winmedia file, and who wants to even talk about realtime files anymore. If it's web delivery you are after you can't go wrong with swf files.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
I agree.
Toon Boom is a really great animation program. You can do much more with the camera and can get some amazing effects going but for the web you just cant get any better than flash. Stick with it.
I have seen Moho and my friend uses it a bit. Its ok, can be a bit complicated to new comers, takes a few hours to get your head around everything. Again you can get some good effects but you just cant beat flash for web....
As I've said in the past, if you look at the job postings on AWN, you'll see many job openings for Flash Animators, but I've yet to see a posting for a ToonBoom animator.
Just my 2 cents.
Flash Character Packs, Video Tutorials and more: www.CartoonSolutions.com
You'll have more diverse possibilities with Flash. And with Toon Boom, you'll need Flash to accompany it for full effectiveness. I love some of the stuff Toon Boom does for me, but you really can't get everything out of it without having Flash to make preloaders for your movies, or to prepare some graphics better than Toon Boom will.
Wander around the forum at Toon Boom and you'll find a few people who love TBS just for the graphics possibilities--one guy there said he just loves to pain in it--the brush tool is very configurable. It is a pretty neat program, but again, you gotta have Flash to go with it.
Haven't been around in a while, hello to Phacker and Blue.
Cartoon Thunder
There's a little biker in all of us...
lol I know I sound like a sales person. It's just that I like the program so much. It's the best thing that has happed to me animation wise. It has changed SOOOOOOOO much since it first began. You can do stuff that Flash can do and even better in my opinion. I personally can't figure Flash out and why people like it so much. I understand that it has good web output and has a lot of interactive stuff but from MOST of what I've seen produces extremely limited looking animation. Again, I am not trying to bash ANYONE who uses Flash. In fact, I have seen some really GOOD full-looking stuff done on it such as "Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends". It just doesn't appeal to ME personally as an animation program.
Just my $0.02.
Spoooze!
It only took me maybe an hour to learn the basic stuff. I think it's probably one of the LEAST complicated programs out there....
But that's just me...
James
Hey Spoooze, I am one of those rare people that really like the drawing tools in Flash, but I promise if the new version of Moho will work on my old computer, I give it another twirl.
Yo, welcome back to the fold Rupert.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
Okay cool :D
Just so you know, Moho exports to .SWF files so you can import them or whatever you do lol.
Spoooze!
do you mean flash as an animation tool (interface, tools and workflow)
or flash as a handy, compact, web-friendly format?
the thing that kept me from flash is the way it renumbers my 'handle points'
later down the timeline.
in moho, a 3-point circle in frame 1 is the same as in frame 10.
in flash, it becomes a 7-point circle-- which vexes me considerably.
how can i animate if the program keeps renumbering my splines?
limit my animation to snappy squash and stretch?
also moho introduced bones. which i say is a great introduction to the
rigging concepts in 3D. it even introduces you to texturing.
cant blame spooze. for a little more learning curve,
you get a little more creative leeway.
that will always be an argument in itself.
Don't worry. All shall be well.
I agree with Kutkut although I WOULD use it for web development, just not animation, if it wasn't so darn expensive....
Spoooze!
I am not really sure what you are doing that makes Flash add anchor points to your circle, but it doesn't do that for me.
As for textures, you can always use bitmap fills in Flash.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.