Everyone here has been so kind in offering their insight, I thought I would toss this one out there-
I AM NOT AN ARTIST. Professionally anyway.
I’m not even a computer guy. Electrician if you must know. Anyway…
I'm working on a hand drawn short (see "Newbie Looking for Sage Thread if you want background).
I've been playing with the TVPaint Demo, it's got a pretty steep learning curve for my lil' ol' brain, but I'm sure I could manage if I decide to go that path.
Today, I downloaded Corel Painter X - which seems to have the features I need (simple coloring of B&W images with a hand drawn look) for several hundred dollars less, as a fair citizen of this forum pointed out to me a few days ago.
Here’s the question part:
I believe CPX is a fairly new product on the market, and I'm wondering if any of you have played with it much. It does come with some animation tools, which seem ok, not as nice as TVP, but should work for what I'm doing.
If any of you have used both, do you feel strongly one way or another?
Pros? Cons?
Thanks in advance!
~Adam
:confused:
Painter has been around for a while and it's a great program--for creating still images. Yes, it has some rudimentary animation tools, but nothing like you'll find in Mirage or Flash or ToonBoom. I don't even think there's a way to bring sound files in.
Are you looking to have your images animated or you're just looking for something to make digital art that has a hand-drawn look ?
TVPaint would be overkill if that is all you want to do , but if you do in fact want animated images then you'll need some way to organize and time those images (an Ex-sheet or a timeline with different layers) , and as grumbleboy pointed out you need some way to import sound for lip sync or musical timing , then all the images need to be exported to a video format . For that sort of thing you will need an animation specific program like TVPaint , Mirage, ToonBoom, Flash , etc.
For simply coloring B&W images with a hand-drawn look you could use Photoshop, ArtRage 2 , or Painter.
"EustaceScrubb" has left the building
Yes, I'm animating, very simple, hand drawn and scanned images that I'm trying to color, by giving a hand colored pencil look. TVP has this tool, as does CPX, which also has some animation tools. I hadn't considered sound yet. I could always dump the file into Pinnacle Studio, Premiere, or one of the other various video editing tools I already own for the audio part, if I can export from what ever I chose, to some standard format. I'm just trying to decide which software will:
1) allow me to edit my animation (control frame rate, scene length).
2) allow me some very basic tools to add a background, onion skin, and do some coloring effects, like I mentioned above. The trick here is that frame to frame, the coloring won't change much, so I would like to copy the color from one cell, to the next, and make subtle "tweaks". I’m not drawing on the PC too much, most my drawing are on paper, scanned and imported for cleaning up lines, and adding a little color.
3) export the project to a DVD, or some format that one of my video editors will except, so I can put the project on DVD. I know Corel WILL export as AVI - so that should work.
There is a ton of stuff out there, so far TVPaint seems to be the best at what I want to do, but it's pretty expensive given I'm a hobbyist. Corel Painter seems to do what I need it to do for much less, I was just wondering if anybody here had any experience animating with the version that just came out this year, and was wondering if they had any input.
I hope I explained myself a bit better! Thanks for the input thus far!
hi atomic68,
I use TVPaint Animation and ArtRage 2.0 almost everyday for my job.
I still didn't try Painter X (I only used Painter IX in the past ...) but I will try to answer to your questions :
IMO, Artrage 2.0 has the best oilbrush rendering. (EDIT : Some improvements have been surely added since Painter X ... so I'm maybe wrong :rolleyes: )
The BIG advantage of Artrage is the price : it costs only 20 USD ! for TVPaint and Painter you need almost 450 USD !!
However you can't animate in Artrage ...
TVPaint has some cool drawing tools too, but unfortunalety they don't equal those from Painter X. The drawing tools management of TVPaint is clearly different too, but not really difficult to understand.
Regarding animation feature now :
TVPaint allows to edit animations (control frame rate, scene length)
It allows to work with several "animation layers": For instance, you can have a layer for the background, one for a character, one for the colors, another one for the shadows, ... (it is difficult to do that in Painter ...)
You can scan and clean you hand-made drawing with this software,
You can copy the color from one cell, to the next, and use a lighttable (it is the same as the "oinion skin" of Painter).
As Painter, TVPaint does not export directly the project to a DVD, but you can export in .avi, .mov, or picture sequence. (so you will need an other software to convert your animations in DVD format )
Regards,
Fabrice.
Thanks Fabrice;
I haven't heard of Artrage until now, I will check it out, even I have $20 to spare! I have some time to decide, right now I'm just drawing and scanning, so I won't need to make up my mind on software for a few months, but I'm trying to start learning now.
What ever I end up doing, it seems clear that I may need a couple of different tools to get the job done.
I'll check out Artrage, and let you know what I think!
Thanks for the response!
~Adam