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Knowledge is power, but throughout the history of mankind, knowledge has mostly been kept in the domain of the affluent and privileged. Money has always been the access key to keeping up with the latest invention that would make life easier and more efficient. The lovely thing about the computer age is that knowledge has become more democratized, and especially through the Internet, is easily disseminated. In the past two decades, we've seen homemade recording studios rival professional facilities. The iMac and Final Cut Pro let one make a short film in an apartment that can be entered into festivals. Another recent development in this proletariat computer revolution is Animation:Master (A:M) by Hash. Up and coming animators swear by it. It's affordable, can be used easily by one person, and lets the animators get to the job of animating more readily. This month, Animation World Magazine asked four animators about their experience with Animation:Master, why they chose to work with it, how it has helped their careers, aspects they would change and aspects they love!

Take a look at why Alien Song became a huge Internet hit, bringing attention to Victor Navone's talent and to the Animation:Master software program. © 1999 Victor Navone.

Victor Navone
Victor Navone is a traditional artist and computer animator born in San Diego, California, in 1970. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and five years as a conceptual designer and CG artist at Presto Studios, he began studying 3D character animation in his spare time. In 1998 he achieved massive popularity with Alien Song, via the Internet. He now animates for Pixar Animation working first on the feature Monsters, Inc., and now a new short film. He still works on his own projects as well.

I began using A:M in 1998 while employed at Presto Studios. I was looking for organic modeling software on the Mac and I had heard good things about A:M's spline modeler. As my interest in character animation grew I found that A:M had a powerful set of tools for this, so I began building my alien character "Blit" on the fly and setting him up for animation. I completed three test animations with Blit, the last being Alien Song, which got the ball rolling for me.

Victor Navone and his alien creation. Photo credit Sofia Saile.

I found the animation tools to be relatively easy to master, allowing me to focus on the nuances of the performance. The non-linear, layerable animation scheme allowed me to combine lip-synch, walk cycle and custom animation. The fact that A:M runs on both Mac and PC was a bonus for me, as I had a Mac at work and a PC at home. Once I had completed Alien Song I found that it was becoming very popular and being spread across the Internet by email. I began getting a lot of attention and offers for work, most notably from Pixar. Luckily I had the foresight to burn my name into the movie so that people could find me.

I always have a laundry list of feature requests, and no software is perfect. There isn't anything I would necessarily change about A:M, so much as add. Things like better support for multipass rendering and compositing techniques and more flexibility in surface and rendering attributes. I am currently using A:M for my next short film called Big Bang.