Software Review: Web Painter

One of Totally Hip's "Hip Clips"In the last issue, I looked at Macromedia's Flash, a program that allows you to do animation for the Web. This month, I tested out Totally Hip Software's WebPainter, a program with the same general purpose as Flash, but aimed at a different market. While Flash works with vector-based images and allows a considerable amount of interactivity for a rather high price; WebPainter allows you to easily create GIF animations, and is inexpensive, but lacks the interactivity and more professional look that Flash is capable of. If you already have a program like...

By Guillaume Calop | Tuesday, April 1, 1997 at 12:00 am

Exemple of a QuickTime export - Totally Hip's "Hip Clips"

Import choices: Gif, PICS, PICT, Windows Bit Map, AVI Movies, and QuickTime files can be imported into the program.

Export choices: Gif Animation, Gif or PICT files, Windows Bit Map, QuickTime Movies, AVI Movies, Sizzler, Java. For Gif animation, Sizzler and Java, an HTML code is provided to embed it on your page.

JPEG & PNG (Portable Network Graphics format) import and export will be added to version 2.0. Also, it will be possible to "batch open" files to import many files at the same time and "import" and "export" will be replaced simply by "open" and "save as".

A Word on Sizzler.

Sizzler is a piece of freeware from Totally Hip, distributed online and via the WebPainter CD-ROM. Sizzler will turn your Gif animation into a "sprite" file that can be viewed with a plug-in. What does this add? It puts your animation into a streaming format, which allows it to be directly displayed with no download time, even with big files. At first, the animations have poor quality, but it does improve by the time it downloads. Another cool thing thatSizzler does, is allow you to embed a sound clip in your animation and make it into a button. The problem with Sizzler is that the viewer needs to have a plug-in, unless you make it into a Java file; in that case, the user needs a Java capable browser. Also, the interactivity is quite limited.

Bottom line: It's easy, it's cheap, and if you're new to animating on the Web, go for it. If you're looking for advanced animation capabilities, it can be useful for certain tasks (it'll replace your GifBuilder), but you'll need to go to Shockwave.

Examples of Gif animation and Sizzler can be seen on the Totally Hip Web site at http://www.totallyhip.com.
WebPainter 2.0 is available for Windows 95/NT, Macintosh and Power Macintosh. Until June 11, it is being sold at US$49.00, then it will be priced at $99.00. It should be available at retail, via mail order, and on-line shops. You can also get a 30 day free downloadable trial version at http://www.totallyhip.com/.

Guillaume Calop is AWN's Webmaster and is Animation World Magazine's Technical Editor.