Hi everyone,
I recently got involved with 2d animation and im on a quest to find the "all in one 2d animation software".I've used Toon Boom Studio so far, and its good to make your basic animated sketches but when it comes to painting and effects,it doesn't seem to cut it through for me.I am not saying that i'm a specialist or something,i'm still at the basics, but i have a goal and this software doesn't seem to help it. My goal is to make a totally pro looking 2d feature film almost totally on my own, i am also a sound engineer,composer and i want to make the animation, the music, the sound design and some of the V.O's for the characters.I'm used to working until the morning hours, so hard work wont be a problem, although i figure it will take a lot.. of time to finish.
What i was wondering by watching cartoons is, in what software do they
use special effects,such as particle effects,liquify filters and so on.
at the beginning i figured that they did it in after effects or something,
but then i saw 2d animated characters above the effects layers also combining with the painted backgrounds,such as light waves on a river.
And also about combining 3d with 2d, will the animation be exported and thrown in 3ds max or something?
I've spent endless hours in Google, trying to find out how all this is done
and if there's a software that does it all,but i got no where.
Can a single software work for a full 2d animation production?
I've always wondered how a full digital production works specially for low budget films but the info for 2d animation on the web is very limited
as i've seen so far.
Any help would be appreciated greatly.
Cheers.:)
Hey, i think everyone is going to give you the same answer here. Go with Flash.
I make all my cartoons in Flash. Charcacters, animation, music, voices, painting, etc. The only thing that you won´t be able to make is advanced effects and 3d.
But, come on... that´s not bad.
Regardzzz
Huan
www.joulimousis.com.ar
Moho is really good.
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho
It's cheaper than Flash ($99) and just as powerful. All you need is a video editor like iMovie, Final Cut, Flash, or even Windows Movie Maker to edit your animations together and put them on the web or video.
James :cool:
Well to be technically accurate, Moho is nowhere near as powerful as Flash, not by a long shot. The better contrast would be Moho vs. the animation-relevant features of Flash. I know that's what you mean but just so it's clear for the uninformed.
And in point of fact, there's some pretty 2 1/2-D that gets done with Flash.
Ah, yes, thanks for pointing that out. In some ways such as web design and graphics, it is more powerful. But animation wise, Moho is the better choice because it was design specifically for animation and not for web design as Flash was originally intended to be.
My dad's says that he hopes Adobe will release an animation-only version of Flash because he, as an animator, won't use a lot of the stuff other than the animation features.
lol, he's a pro but he actually likes Moho a lot better than Flash. He and I both hope that more companies will start noticing it becuase it is a powerful animation ( ;) ) program.
That's a good one too. Lots of pros use it.
James :cool:
I've downloaded the tvpaint demo and it looks like a really powerfull software
specially with textures and brushes. And Digicells Flipbook mentions something about 3D although i didnt quite look that one up yet.Well i intend to do something like the animation style in Naruto so i dont think i'd need textures for the characters and i suppose i'll do the backgrounds either in photoshop, or painter when i learn it a bit more.
I been working in the animation industry for over 10 years and believe me theire no magic all in one software..... No studio use juste one sofware... You should get to know, Photoshop, after fx, Combustion, Premiere and Flash or Toonboom (harmony). That should be a good base for you. Don't even think about finding one software.
If your goal is to make a feature film by yourself...gooood luck. Your in for a ride, i'm talking 20 years if not more of hard work. The only guy that i know that was able to come close to making a feature film by his own was Richard Williams (animation director of roger Rabbit) He did most of it but got a few animators helping him out by the end.
I'd really like to get my hands on Harmony but the price tag is unreal for me:D besides, from what i've seen its basically the same as Solo but for server usage for a lot of animators to work at the same time.I've downloaded the demo of Toonz Bravo and that seems promising but i'm in a dilemma between raster and vector graphics. With vectors you can zoom it as close as you like but with rasters you can give it a more humane feeling specially for the shadows.I don't know any opinions?
What about CTP?
With CTP you have an scan-program, ink and paint (in comparison to Animo not as good...), of course you can arrange your frames in x-sheets, you can import your audio files, and you can do your compositing (including backgrounds, effects and so on. That's what other programs like Animo and Toonboom also do.
I've tried DigiCel Flipbook, CTP and Animo. For me the winner is certainly Animo! I love this program!
Greetz
http://violabaier.blogspot.com/
I know this is picking nits, but...
Flash evolved from a program called Future Splash, which was designed as a vector animation package. The web design aspects of Flash didn't really come strongly into play until later versions.
That said, Flash isn't the most animator-friendly software out there, but it gets the job done admirably.
I was actually referring to things like the programming bits...
but I also thought Moho was sort of like what you're talking about, an animation-only version of Flash. A lot of similar programs are made WITH Flash, and develop their "unique" features by building mods that use the drawing code in a certain way. If that's not the case I'll have to check it out later tonight.