Help! Plastic Animation Paper, Toon Boom Studio, Flipbook, or Flash?

Oh yeah, sorry Zabrisa. I forgot to mention, my demo reel tends to not want to play on Mac's :( I'm working on that problem over the next couple of months. So if you have access to a PC with a fast connection please check it out.

Yeah, I've seen grafikdon's animation. It's coming along nicely. I remember seeing it when he first posted it here months, even a year, ago, and he's come along way.

Aloha,
the Ape

I recommend Moho. It's a vector based animation program and has everything you asked for including inbetweening plus more :D You can vectorize images and digitally ink/paint them plus you can use characters over and over again.
Oh ya, it's a 2D animation program BUT you rig the characters (literally add bones) as if they were in Maya or some other CG program.
It only costs $99 and you can download a free demo that has all the features.
Read more and see some clips ect. here:

http://www.lostmarble.com

Hope this helps :D

Spoooze!

sorry i can't compare each but i can tell you my experience with toonboom. you can import froom other programs, but i am having trouble monipulating images once in toonboom - maybe i'll figure it out. you can save (export) in avi or flash. you can paint backgrounds & it has a utility to help with lip sync. uploading to web is just a file transfer, so that works. it doesn't burn directly to dvd; you'll need authoring software for that, but it usually comes with the dvd burner anyway. in betweening - sorry, i don't know, does it?

Hello.

I use Flipbook because of the quality and the easy interface.

I don't know of any software that inbetweens. Animo did when it first came out in the late 80's- early 90's- but that function was very cumbersome it was eliminated years ago.

Flash doesn't really inbetween- no arcs, no good movement, no good animation.

You could always hire someone or get an intern to inbetween,

For 2D inbetweening is a way of life.

Thanks.

There's no animation software that will burn to DVD. You need DVD authoring software to do that.

Painting backgrounds and frames are really two different animals. Cel painting software isn't really set up to create the subtlety usually present in backgrounds.

An experienced user can use Flash's tweening tools to get good inbetweens, depending on the kind of work you're doing. It's much easier with effects than with characters, and with characters it depends largely on how they're set up and what you want the final work to look like. It does take some experience with the tool though.

Maybe it'd be easier to help if you talked a bit about what you're trying to do. A short film? A web-based project with interactivity? Something else?

Flash tweens symbols in a way that work very well if done right. It really does save buttloads of time, but it's easy (too easy) to cheat in Flash by overusing tweens and holds. If you can fight past that, it's probably the best program for doing digital "limited" animation.

Hi Zabrisa and welcome to the Forums.

I'm going to go with Flash as well. Well, because that's what I know. Like everyone else said befor, it can do everything you want to do except burn to DVDs. It can both do a motion tween and a shape tween.

Motion tweens are linear tweens of a symbol, say a shape of a hand. If you want it to go up, you set it's start keyframe, and it's end key frame and tween between the two and there you have it. You can also adjust the the spacing of the tween by adding an ease-in or an ease-out. So far you can't do both on the same tween. That's a feature I've asked Macromedia to add, but we'll see.

Shape tweens are more of a morphing type of tween. Say you want a square to tween into a rectangle. You once again set the start keyframe with the square, set the end keyframe with the rectangle, and hit shape tween, and pray it works. Shape tweens kinda hit or miss, so you have to play around with it.

Flash has it's draw backs of course just like anything. But you play to it's strengths and find work arounds to it's drawbacks. It's not the medium that makes bad animation, it's the artists at the helm. Good luck in what ever program you choose to work with, and if you run into problems, there are lots of people here that are willing to help.

I'd recomend checking out my demo reel on my website, www.animatedape.com, and Pascal's animation on the "Show and Tell" forums for two wildly different takes on how you can animate with Flash.

Aloha,
the Ape