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MarkBorok · Joined: 17 Jun 2007 Posts: 15

I've looked at TV Paint, but didn't buy it because 1) Mirage was offered at a discount to anyone who owned any graphics software whatsoever and 2) when I looked at the TV Paint web site at first I couldn't figure out how to order it from the U.S. By the time I figured that out, I had already ordered Mirage.

I've been a big user of Moho and actually got to make a short cartoon for the Cartoon Network with it. I really hate what e-frontier is doing with it, though, trying to market it as "anime" software and changing the way the demo works by having it time out after 30 days. It has a lot of cool features, like the way onion skinning works, that would be more useful in a traditional animation program.

I have to say, I love software not only as a tool for animation, but as a work of art in its own right. A well-designed or extremely clever piece of software is as exciting to me as a well-animated cartoon.

idragosani · Joined: 22 Sep 2006 Posts: 85 Location: Germantown MD

Cerberust · Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 2

My whole demo reel is traditional flash animation, and I'm just hoping I can get my foot in the door, even if I'm doing symbol animation, which is what seems to be happening in America, cheap and quick. I'll be moving to LA early August to test my meddle and see if I can score a starting gig.

I'd kill to work traditional though, and intend to keep my own side projects going, to keep me happy.

Nancy Beiman · Joined: 17 Mar 2007 Posts: 50

I just completed my first paperless animated film entirely in Photoshop and After Effects 7.
AE allows you to get an illustrative quality to your animation that Flash does not have--and its 'parenting' button allows you to attach limbs to the paper puppet, which can be put into and out of 3D as you wish. I got some graphic animation that looked like pastels. I vastly prefer AE to Flash.

As for what I do for a living now, I teach (mainly because I wanted to get out of LA and out of the overheated deadlines common to all animated films nowadays.) I also do a lot of illustration work and am about to get into 3 dimensional greeting card and product design (I did a lot of the latter for Disney's and Jim Henson's in the past and will now use my own characters instead.)

Animation has suffered a sea change that isn't going away any time soon.The real reason CGI became the medium of choice with animation executives was that it was possible to keep the characters on model all the time, so it could be farmed out to much cheaper overseas studios and/or turned out by beginning animators who worked for less than seasoned pros. It takes a lot more effort to keep a hand drawn film looking consistent.

Animators in any medium should have a larger skills set so they can rely on something else when the industry contracts. When I freelanced in the eighties I spent one entire year doing book illustration for a well known author and doing product design for Disney...without a single frame of animation for the entire year.

I just thank Heaven that I studied with some great teachers who showed me how to do something OTHER than merely animating.
_________________
Animation isn't the illusion of life. Animation IS life. --Chuck Jones

slowtiger · Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Posts: 3 Location: Berlin, Germany

One mournful aspect of Flash is the uniform "design" of most Flash generated output. But this can be overcome by any talented artist. The other one, which I think is worse, is that many people believe in "Flash makes animation far cheaper", so bugets are cut even more.

A friend of mine produced some short animation segments for german children's TV. The responsible exec didn't care about how it should look like, but insisted of it being done in Flash. The stories could have been done traditionally on paper as fast as well, and with a much better look - but no, it had to be Flash.

This thinking is not restricted to Flash but to every animation software. A project I work on pays 380 $ for finished animation, done with pre-rigged characters in AnimeStudio - per minute. I wouldn't mind if the style would really fit the software, but unfortunately they expect it to move like (cheap) full cel animation.

Nancy Beiman · Joined: 17 Mar 2007 Posts: 50

Hello Slowtiger, if you do the math, you would find that you are making less than someone waiting on tables or doing entry level data processing. $380.00 per minute? That's the sort of budget my students' films cost, and they aren't working to the sort of deadlines you are.
That sum is just disgraceful.

_________________
Animation isn't the illusion of life. Animation IS life. --Chuck Jones