Hey. :)
So I'm getting started animating, and searching for the software through which I'll be produce my films. What I'd really like to hear from you folks is what your experiences with the different software packages have been like, what you'd recommend - and what you think would be best in my particular situation.
Before I get started, I'll apologize for the rambling, scattershot, lengthy content of this post!, hee. But honestly - I'm clueless!, I really don't have a good idea where to turn or what to look for, so I'm hoping that in being thorough in my explanation to you I'll be able to get the help I need. Thanks for your patience!
Over the course of two days, I've taught myself enough Flash Pro 8 to make a reasonably ok cartoon through it - but, honestly, I think I might hate it. :| Who knows!, maybe it's all that just-learning frustration, but, personally, I think I can really see how a software package specifically geared towards animation - rather than all the stuff Flash has to be able to deal with - would really streamline the whole process. For example, in Digicel I think, you have all of your frames of animation on one side of the screen - and then you select, in the series, how long each frame lasts. But with Flash, at 24 frames per second, just for an animation that runs about thirty seconds, I'm dealing with 700ish frames in the timeline - for each and every layer!
I don't think the motion of the Flash-look is right for my projects. Sorry! :) So far with what I've made, actually, I've done most of the work in Photoshop, brought it over as bitmaps, and resigned myself to exporting in AVI format (the output quality of which sucks in Flash 8 Pro unless you select 16-bit, which ruins some pictures). So in any projects I do, I'm going to be primarily using standard, classical hand-drawn animation, in the sense that my inbetweens will be entirely drawn and scanned - not tweened. So it seems like the main function of Flash, tweening, I won't ever use. And moreover, I really don't /need/ for anything to be in a vector graphics format. More on this later! But this being the case - is there really anything Flash is doing for me?, is there really any reason to use it?
One thing I do like about Flash, though, is how easy it is to create some very limited special effects in it. If I couldn't manipulate the alpha channels and import Photoshop images with their full transparencies intact, I don't know what I'd do. Also some of the little effects that you can apply to 'movie clip symbols' are interesting as well. So whatever software I finally do go with, I definitely would welcome any and all special-effects capabilities - primarily transparencies, alphas, and the like. There are special effects I'd love to use that I don't think any standard 2d animation program is going to be capable of though - what's a 3d-graphics program that's geared primarily towards special-effects, rather than 3d-modeling? What 2d animation programs offer some advanced shading and lighting options? One effect I'd love to use would be the classic old backlighting effect - where they'd shine a light through the other side of the cel, and it would bleed out over the picture just slightly, so that in the finished film the character or scene would look as if it were framed in light.
So far my biggest problem has been taking my original drawings and sketches and turning them into finished, cleaned, colored frames. Try as I might, experimenting for hours on end, I can't get the hang of the little pen tools where you drag an outline point-by-point. Buying a WACOM-tablet will probably help a great deal - but I'd really love a program that helps me out in some way with this. At the same time though, yet again I really prefer the look of the older cartoons - where the outlines weren't perfectly clean, where if you looked closely you could see little stray marks shifting in every frame. So am I yet again looking at using Photoshop? Are all the animation programs vector-based for the character animations? Is there any sensible way of combining the two - perhaps vector for coloring-in and shading, but bitmap for the outlines and contours?, so I can still have that rough-at-the-edges look?
That's it for now!, but there will certainly be more if I get any responses, heh. :) Thanks again!, I do appreciate your help!, take care.
You can do really quick good quality animation with this program:
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho
It has a lot of stuff like particle effects, bone animation where you build your character and add bones to it to move it around, switch layers (you can do replacement mouth, hand, head, ect. animation w/ that).
I've found this program EXTREMELY satisfactory and use it a lot for my animation. It took me less than an hour to learn the basics.
Unlike Flash, which is a web design program with an animation feature, Moho is an animation program in and out. It's also a cheap $99. Compared to Flash which is over $700 that price is great.
James :cool:
P.S.
No I am not the maker of this program nor do I get payed to advertise ;)
Hi!, thanks for your reply!
I'll look into Moho, start reading about it, checking out your toons.
Since I posted my earlier message, I've continued reading-around - until you mentioned Moho, I thought it would really come down to deciding between Toon Boom Solo (not studio) or Animo (if it's comparable in price to Toon Boom Solo, ie under $3K). But the weird thing about both these programs, really, is that seem to claim to have all the same features, all the same clients...so how am I supposed to know any one is any better than another?, hee. :) Guess trying out the demos, huh? I'll get on that! Just the same, if anyone's had experiences with the two, can do a little comparison for me..? Thanks bunches. :)
But yeah!, checking out Moho now, once I've taken a look at it, tried the different demos, I'll post again.
It might be easier to suggest a solution if you could post a clip of your film to look at. Every project (and filmmaker) has different demands that require different solutions. From what you've said, it sounds like your use of Flash is akin to using a wrench to hammer in a screw :D In other words, it's not the best tool for the job.
Seeing what you're trying to accomplish might help in making recommedations.
I beleive Digicel's timeline works the same as Flash where you have your key frame and that lasts for how ever many frames you want till your next keyframe. The main difference being that Flash you can have unlimited layers as opposed to being limited in Digicel.
I don't mean to sound like an @$$ but the motion of animation is really determened by the animator and not the software you're using.
It sounds like you have a very big budget to play with, and want to do everything traditionally, so I'd say go with ToonBoom or Animo and also buy Adobe's After Effects for all the transparencies and backlighting effects you want.
Also DSB had a good sugestion of posting some of your animation so we could get a better sense of what style you are going for.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
"But with Flash, at 24 frames per second, just for an animation that runs about thirty seconds, I'm dealing with 700ish frames in the timeline - for each and every layer!"
but of course. 24x30 is 720. No matter where you go, what software you use you'll end up with 720 frames at 24fps for 30 secs. For each layer. Even in traditional-- it's the same. it's not flash's problem. It's good ol' 35mm film's fault.
"is there really anything Flash is doing for me?"
Yes there is-- it can animate using only one drawing-- and that's a lot of saving. it will be limited style though, that's the downside. upside is, you
can give it more drawings. and for simple moves-- blinks, lip-sync, mechanical movements-- you can save a lot of time and resources.
in the hands of an animator who's a master of timing, flash's tweening
works great. if you use it in default, it looks crappy. floaty.
plus, you have a perfectly vector setup. which means if you ever decide to
render your animation for film resolution-- you're set. and the file is small.
when i have a particular problem with a software, i always say to myself:
others can do it-- why can't i? it's just logic. creativity-- now that's the
hard part. even if i have some, won't be the same as yours, and nobody
knows which is better. but logic-- there's gotta be a way through this.
try learning the pen tool. i can draw straight with it from scratch. so do
others. then when you know you can ditch it.
Don't worry. All shall be well.
Hey!, thanks to everyone for their replies.
Well, that's another matter I'm going to need some help with - at this point, I don't have my own animation equipment, haven't laid hands on any since a friend of mine moved away - not even a scanner to get anything in, I haven't been able to put anything into a computer for months now. With the Flash experimentation, it was all done with little figures I drew in Flash, and was never intended to be more than a learning exercise - or possibly a DVD play-button intro-screen, at least in concept. It really isn't anything like what I'm hoping to animate. So I really haven't anything to show you - and actually I've been meaning to post another topic, ask if there's any alternative online to cartoonsupplies?, any other places to check out?, or if they're really the only game. (lightfoot seems to be the same exact outfit)
But anyway, to try to give you some idea of the look I'm going for - I subscribe wholly to the animation philosophy of John Kricfalusi, I just think he's spot on with everything he has to say about the importance of expressions, the essential focus on strong acting, the inspiration he draws from the likes of Clampett and Avery, etc. - and the look I'm going for in my own production lies somewhere close to his 'New Adventures of Mighty Mouse' but also between that and his 'Ren and Stimpy', albeit with contemporary shading methods and some special effects. So what I'm going for really doesn't need to move smoothly, doesn't need to offer me any shortcuts - I'm fine with a toon that plays 'chunky', hee. :)
Anyway!, you guys have some good points, I agree, Ape's right - even in a Flash animation, it's really not forcing you to go with any one particular kind of motion, that's true - you could put anything in there, it's up to the creator whether or not they tween. I mean - I've a grand total of two days' experience with the program, I'm sure I can't begin to imagine all the mistakes I made. I still really don't know what the heck different 'symbols' are all about - but I'm aware that one mistake I kept making was having repeating animations in the main timeline, instead of just making them movie clips and putting in the single frame to fire them up...so lots of little things like that, I'm sure, add up. But one thing I can't stand in Flash is how, if I've an audio track, it doesn't play the fragmented sections as I click or key through frames - that makes it almost a guessing-game as to where, precisely, I should put the movements of characters in order to match up to the sounds.
I would be absolutely delighted to find that there's nothing in Toon Boom Solo that can't be done with Flash 8 Pro - but there just seem to be so many additional features (advanced vectorization, shading, effects, an export-to-video function I can trust unlike with F8P...) I think I'm pretty sold on it at this point!, though I'll have to budget it all out months in advance before I can get to it. In the meantime, though, I'm definitely going to get started with a proper lightbox, disc and scanner, have a stack of drawings ready to go into the program when I get it, experiment with the demo in the meantime - I just wish I had more to choose from than cartoonsupplies, just to see what else is out there...
I know it's pushing the bounds of the the thread-topic, but since it's my own thread I guess it's okay, hee - but uh, what /about/ scanners?, I really have no idea which brand is going to be dependable, going to be able to handle black tape for detecting peg slots, hopefully be able to do batch work... I dunno!, if you guys have had any good experiences with any, I'd probably just go with whatever you like. :) Same for lightboxes/discs - I just don't want to end up with something wobbly, unsteady, or fickle - like a disc that turns when I don't want it to, or something like that.
Thanks for putting up with me you guys!
yeah, getting used to flash's tools takes getting used to...i just started experimenting with tweaking outlines.
even when you bring a vector over from illustrator or something, you still have to take care not to accidentally mess up your outlines.
oh my gosh, that's right John K did do mighty mouse!!!
how did i not really realize that til now. I FREAKIN' LOVE BATBAT!!!
Website http://dapper-dandy.com
Cartoon Syndicate project
http://cartoon-syndicate.com
Yeah, you aren't going to learn a program in two days. I've been animating with Flash for six years and I still learn new stuff that the program can do all the time. As for animation supplies, you can also try http://www.chromacolour.com/store/welcome_ca.htm of just google "animation+supplies" and that should bring up several sites.
You can scrub through your audio clip. You have to click on your audio clip in the timeline and in the preference box, set the audio clip to "stream" rather then the default of "Event"
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."