Hello all
Been a bit since I posted, tons of work here.
Tools to hand draw have been discused in lenght in other parts of the forum.
The way things are is that AS Pro is aimed at cutout animation, not hand drawn or freehand animation, true you can do stunning animation with it, but limited to cutout.
My goal is to develop a workflow to be able to produce a movie like La Reine Soleil and to be able to achieve that look in AS Pro, in a timelly fashion, AS Pro would need a toolset clearly aimed at such a production.
1. Morphing
2. Dopesheet, with the ability to create key and tweened frames.
3. Deep access to scripting
4. Color registration
5. Guides
From my point of vue, onionskinning in switch layers would not need to be implemented with the above features. Also, rig tricks are fun from the intellectual point of vue, but are not useable in a production setting, just like workarounds.
Just my two cents
Gilles
AS feature discussion - AS more than "Cut out" sty
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
Hello again
To continue on previous post
6. Better toon shader for 3D object, for props or BG
Here is an idea of workflow for hand drawn animation
1. You create frames in the dopesheet
2. You drag a character basic pose to frame 1
3. You pose the character the way you want it, with bones and switch layers
4. You tweak the character in the main window using AS Pro tools
5. You copy paste character from frame 1 to say frame 5
6. You tweak the character to a new pose, still using AS Pro tools
You create a full range of main poses then let AS Pro do the inbetween. The idea is not having to draw anything but instead sort of model the many tweens and let the software do the inbetween. Would allow a full range of motion instead of the limited cutout type of animation.
Gilles
To continue on previous post
6. Better toon shader for 3D object, for props or BG
Here is an idea of workflow for hand drawn animation
1. You create frames in the dopesheet
2. You drag a character basic pose to frame 1
3. You pose the character the way you want it, with bones and switch layers
4. You tweak the character in the main window using AS Pro tools
5. You copy paste character from frame 1 to say frame 5
6. You tweak the character to a new pose, still using AS Pro tools
You create a full range of main poses then let AS Pro do the inbetween. The idea is not having to draw anything but instead sort of model the many tweens and let the software do the inbetween. Would allow a full range of motion instead of the limited cutout type of animation.
Gilles
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synthsin75
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I keep getting thrown by AS being referred to as strictly 'cutout'.
viewtopic.php?p=70163#70163
That just bothers me deeply. Granted AS could use a better frame by frame workflow, but I just don't think AS deserves to be pigeonholed.
viewtopic.php?p=70163#70163
That just bothers me deeply. Granted AS could use a better frame by frame workflow, but I just don't think AS deserves to be pigeonholed.
No one loves it when his or her favorite application get's depracated but one must admit that AS Pro frame by frame tools should be avoided for any serious work and that users should stick to what AS Pro is really good at, cutout animation.synthsin75 wrote:but I just don't think AS deserves to be pigeonholed.
As is, AS Pro could be used for cutout animation production, to a smaller scale then some other software, more big production oriented, this is not AS Pro niche anyway.
I did not imply that AS Pro is not a great application, because it is, I enjoy it every day I can work with it.
To me, the question about the development of AS Pro should be, do we need it to become a hybrid cutout/frame by frame animation software, or should it stay mostlly a cutout animation software.
Do the user base need/want better frame to frame tools, and if so, would it not be best for it to lean toward the way hand drawn animation has been done for over a hundred years by geniuses like Kimball or Ferguson. Would not be best to make those tools solid enough for serious work and compete with other software and give AS Pro a second niche allowing good frame to frame animation with a toolset no onelse has and that could appeal to both hobbiest and pros alike.
Now, if the niche of AS Pro lays in cutout animation, which is still a great medium, allowing loads of animations with little ressources, then this conversation is a bit of waist of time. Let's concentrate on AS Pro strenght and make those tools even better without spreading the toolset too much and making AS Pro less attractive it is right now by adding an incomplete, therefore not very usefull toolset that would only make AS Pro more difficult to learn.
Again, my two cents
Gilles
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synthsin75
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- Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
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Sorry about that, I guess I just think 'cutout' has a bad connotation. South Park for example. I would never want it to overshadow the main strengths of AS, but I do think with minimal effort it could have a much improved frame-by-frame workflow.
Like I said before, when I get the time, I'm sure I can script many improvements in this regard. And by the time I need frame-by-frame, I plan to. So yeah, I'd agree that development should focus on the big strengths, with maybe more scripting access to help the scripters do the rest.
I'm just an overzealous AS fan.
Like I said before, when I get the time, I'm sure I can script many improvements in this regard. And by the time I need frame-by-frame, I plan to. So yeah, I'd agree that development should focus on the big strengths, with maybe more scripting access to help the scripters do the rest.
I'm just an overzealous AS fan.
Yeah, I don't think the term "cutout" quite does Anime Studio the justice it deserves either. I mean would you call GreyKid's animation style, eg La Reine Soleil, "cutout"? Perhaps you mean vector animation or 2.5D animation? At any rate, switch layers are already in there and work seemlessly with point and bone animation. I don't see the harm in doing a small enhancement to it to open up more workflow alternatives. I mean it won't mean you will have to start doing all your animation frame-by-frame just because this is a possibility.
Hello again!
True Greykid does great animation, but, technically it is still cutout with point motion, these guys know the software in and out, use many workarounds and such.
Also, if I understood correctlly, AS Pro was used only for the horse sequence in La Reine Soleil, the rest of it was hand drawn then scanned.
Coming from the animation industry, no studio will use AS for a whole movie or classic style series, even cutout series for that matter, it lacks too many tools to be really usefull in a pipeline.
AS Pro is a great app, in every aspect of it, it is aimed at cutout animation but also has tools that allows to go beyond it's base calling, at the cost of using workarounds and exotic tricks.
I was only saying that if it was to become a hybrid, might as well go all the way.
Gilles
True Greykid does great animation, but, technically it is still cutout with point motion, these guys know the software in and out, use many workarounds and such.
Also, if I understood correctlly, AS Pro was used only for the horse sequence in La Reine Soleil, the rest of it was hand drawn then scanned.
Coming from the animation industry, no studio will use AS for a whole movie or classic style series, even cutout series for that matter, it lacks too many tools to be really usefull in a pipeline.
AS Pro is a great app, in every aspect of it, it is aimed at cutout animation but also has tools that allows to go beyond it's base calling, at the cost of using workarounds and exotic tricks.
I was only saying that if it was to become a hybrid, might as well go all the way.
Gilles
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synthsin75
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Just found this:Also, if I understood correctlly, AS Pro was used only for the horse sequence in La Reine Soleil, the rest of it was hand drawn then scanned.
http://www.articlesandtexticles.co.uk/2 ... ne-soleil/
Seems to say that all of the character work was done with AS.Looking at the video clips on the new Reine Soleil website, you will notice that the characters in the animation have no, or at least very few ink outlines, as there would normally be with traditional animation.
The Hungarian co-production partner company, GreyKid, used some animation software that used to be known as Moho, but is now known as e-Frontier’s Anime Studio.
I remember reading GreyKid saying on these forums somewhere that they came in late in the production to help out another studio and only about 20 minutes of the final film was produced in Anime Studio. Not sure which sequences they ended up doing, but I would have thought the clips they had on their website would have been among them, and these were anything but cutout.
Hello again
This is a pdf file I got from the La Reine Soleil official website, it is all french though. In it they tell everithing there is to know about the movie, they talk about Moho, they say that it was used for some retouching on the horse scene, the one on the greykid site I guess and for some closeups on the pharaon. They also talk in lenght of the paper process used for the movie.
Have the file translated somehow, explains most of a 2D movie production.
reine_soleil_dp3.pdf
The thread where I got the link at first!
viewtopic.php?t=8373&highlight=
Again, this is not an attack on AS Pro, I love it, it is a great app, but you cannot produce a full lenght movie with it, not as it is, not without huge headaches.
AS Pro is a cutout application, it is publicised and reviewed as such, it has tools that allows to do more then cutout only, but with workarounds and tricks, which is not a wise way to go in production.
For production, you need tools that do the job in a predictable way, you cannot put part of your money, which is a pain to get, on finding workarounds for specific task.
Again, my two cents!
Gilles
This is a pdf file I got from the La Reine Soleil official website, it is all french though. In it they tell everithing there is to know about the movie, they talk about Moho, they say that it was used for some retouching on the horse scene, the one on the greykid site I guess and for some closeups on the pharaon. They also talk in lenght of the paper process used for the movie.
Have the file translated somehow, explains most of a 2D movie production.
reine_soleil_dp3.pdf
The thread where I got the link at first!
viewtopic.php?t=8373&highlight=
Again, this is not an attack on AS Pro, I love it, it is a great app, but you cannot produce a full lenght movie with it, not as it is, not without huge headaches.
AS Pro is a cutout application, it is publicised and reviewed as such, it has tools that allows to do more then cutout only, but with workarounds and tricks, which is not a wise way to go in production.
For production, you need tools that do the job in a predictable way, you cannot put part of your money, which is a pain to get, on finding workarounds for specific task.
Again, my two cents!
Gilles
Hello again!
First of, I love it, it trully is well done, but it also serve to illustrate my point here. This is a bone trick, as a TD or director with a big production I do not want to pay peoples to find bone trick to animate my movie, instead, I will pay an animator to hand draw the shot, because I can quantify an animator's work, plan it, while R&D is quite hard to predict.
This is why studios will pay tens of thousands for known and studio ready software to help automate the animation process.
Did you know that the actual first full lenght animated movie was not 1937 Snow White, it was actually the 1917 argentina movie El Apostol made by Quirino Cristiani and that it was made out of cardboard cutouts!
The whole point to my first post was to express my views on what AS Pro could use for frame to frame animation and it became more then what I wanted. Let's not be too protective of a piece of software, this is a hobbiest attitude, this is the prerogative of the maker.
To be taken seriouslly by the industy, AS Pro has to become either an Hybrid or focus solelly on cutout animation. Either way it needs a few more tools to be a candidate.
In it's current making, AS Pro is best suited for hobbiest, shorts, tv spots or music videos. I think it is great that Philippe Leclerc decided to use it on parts of La Reine Soleil, but if you read the above pdf, you'll see that it was not used extensivelly.
Again, my two cents.
Gilles
I missed that one.synthsin75 wrote:I keep getting thrown by AS being referred to as strictly 'cutout'.
First of, I love it, it trully is well done, but it also serve to illustrate my point here. This is a bone trick, as a TD or director with a big production I do not want to pay peoples to find bone trick to animate my movie, instead, I will pay an animator to hand draw the shot, because I can quantify an animator's work, plan it, while R&D is quite hard to predict.
This is why studios will pay tens of thousands for known and studio ready software to help automate the animation process.
Did you know that the actual first full lenght animated movie was not 1937 Snow White, it was actually the 1917 argentina movie El Apostol made by Quirino Cristiani and that it was made out of cardboard cutouts!
The whole point to my first post was to express my views on what AS Pro could use for frame to frame animation and it became more then what I wanted. Let's not be too protective of a piece of software, this is a hobbiest attitude, this is the prerogative of the maker.
To be taken seriouslly by the industy, AS Pro has to become either an Hybrid or focus solelly on cutout animation. Either way it needs a few more tools to be a candidate.
In it's current making, AS Pro is best suited for hobbiest, shorts, tv spots or music videos. I think it is great that Philippe Leclerc decided to use it on parts of La Reine Soleil, but if you read the above pdf, you'll see that it was not used extensivelly.
Again, my two cents.
Gilles
Why bother saying that? What's the point? It's like saying "I'm sorry if I offended you.". If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... it's a duck attack.GCharb wrote: Again, this is not an attack on AS Pro, I love it, it is a great app.
You used the "can't" word. By whose definition do you make this assumption?... but you cannot produce a full lenght movie with it, not as it is, not without huge headaches.
Has anyone produced a full length film with Toonboom? Flash? Oh yes, someone did do it with a very old version of flash a while back...
You have heard about that guy who did a full length feature "hand drawn" animated film BY HIMSELF using Flash 4 and a stylus? He drew all the frames by hand. Took him a few years. I suppose that means that Flash is better suited for doing full length films then?
Oh wait! He also used... MOHO! He used it for crowd scenes and secondary characters to speed up production. Using bones he was able to animate simple motion much faster. Funny that... one guy... made a full length feature animated film by himself and used Moho and Flash... holy cow! He didn't get your email I guess.
Even in a perfect world with hundreds of cheap laborers drawing inbetweens by hand for pennies a day... an animated feature is a huge expensive undertaking. You don't do it because you have "great tools" or the "perfect application". You do it because you WANT to do it.
You limit yourself making those broad emphatic statements. They leave you no room. You box yourself in with your own unproven assumptions. Don't blame the tools.
Which "software" did the creator of "Coraline" use? It must have been Stop Motion Pro® because you have to have full featured professional software to do an animated film. You couldn't possibly waste all that time and energy moving little rubber dolls around one frame at a time.
Since when? Why wasn't I told this a long time ago? I'm always the last one to hear these things.AS Pro is a cutout application, it is publicized and reviewed as such, it has tools that allows to do more then cutout only, but with workarounds and tricks, which is not a wise way to go in production.
Which program are we talking about? Anime Studio? Cut out? I've never done any cut out animation with AS. I hate doing "cut out" animation.
Those descriptions come from "reviewers" and "users" who didn't have time to do more than cutout animation. If you only have limited time to learn to use a paintbrush then the review would be that paint brushes are only good for painting signs and chairs and stripes on a road.
Workarounds? EVERYTHING in computer animation involves "workarounds". There are no "perfect" solutions. Are you saying that if you used another "better" application and you hit a snag or a road block that production would stop immediately because it required "workarounds"?
You create solutions using the resources at hand. If in YOUR opinion AS can't meet your needs then find something that does or submit your feature requests in... uh... here.
If I had enough money, and talented people, I could produce a full length animated feature using AS. I am CERTAIN there are enough people in this forum to produce a feature film that would meet the standards anyone cared to apply to it.
-vern
Hello Vern
I agree with some of the things you say, and yes full lenght movies we're made with toonboom and animo, actually most 2d movies are made with those these days, tv series as well.
La reine Soleil had 4.5 millions for budget, if you ever get that kind of money for a full lenght animated movie then the peoples who got you that money would assing you producers and the such, those producers would make sure you use well established and solid tools.
In the pdf you read that Philippe Leclerc personally asked for Moho to be used on those shots, also says it was a gamble, worked great, cool.
And yes peoples have made full lenght movies on their own in the past, look at the Swan Princess movie, took the guy, an experienced animator, 4 years to make it, was awsome too.
I never said it cannot be done in AS Pro, well yes I did, but I also said it would be a huge headache, and it would.
If I thought AS Pro was not a worthwhile application I would not be here typing all of this, believe me!
Again, not an attack on AS Pro, not the least, just expressing my views on a subject in an open forum and posting my views on how frame to frame animation could be done in AS Pro.
Gilles
I agree with some of the things you say, and yes full lenght movies we're made with toonboom and animo, actually most 2d movies are made with those these days, tv series as well.
La reine Soleil had 4.5 millions for budget, if you ever get that kind of money for a full lenght animated movie then the peoples who got you that money would assing you producers and the such, those producers would make sure you use well established and solid tools.
In the pdf you read that Philippe Leclerc personally asked for Moho to be used on those shots, also says it was a gamble, worked great, cool.
And yes peoples have made full lenght movies on their own in the past, look at the Swan Princess movie, took the guy, an experienced animator, 4 years to make it, was awsome too.
I never said it cannot be done in AS Pro, well yes I did, but I also said it would be a huge headache, and it would.
If I thought AS Pro was not a worthwhile application I would not be here typing all of this, believe me!
Again, not an attack on AS Pro, not the least, just expressing my views on a subject in an open forum and posting my views on how frame to frame animation could be done in AS Pro.
Gilles
I actually agree with Gillis description of AS as a "cutout animation" tool -- and want it to stay that way. Frame by frame tools should NOT be added to AS. I don't want Mike to waste any time doing that any more than I want him to waste time making AS a Flash alternative.
AS is what it is -- and like Popeye, it does a superb job doing what it does. Trying to make it a frame by frame animation program is plain silly. For one thing -- no large production house uses canned software anyway. ANY decent size house uses proprietary stuff. So all that stupid smokescreen arguments about how AS ain't gonna compete in that marketplace are just straw men.
In the second place, there are many many many many (do you get the point?) programs that do frame by frame animation, and do it very well. We don't need another.
What we do need is for AS to improve upon its "cutout animation" tools -- make them even better. Don't worry, Wes -- South Park isn't the be all and end off of such animation. Look at the stuff you're doing to see. If by "cutout" we accept Gillis' definition (and, as I said, I do) it's really just another way of saying it's not a frame by frame program. It uses both bones AND vector interpolation to animate, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So -- in that respect I'm the anti-Gillis: I firmly believe Mike should not even slightly consider FBF enhancements. Anyone who needs this can pick any one of a dozen or more programs that do this and use them in conjunction with TB. What AS *should* do is improve bones, improve vector morphing, improve scripting, add functionality to the interface, etc. etc. etc. There's a ton of stuff on Mike's plate that takes WAY higher precedence.
AS is what it is -- and like Popeye, it does a superb job doing what it does. Trying to make it a frame by frame animation program is plain silly. For one thing -- no large production house uses canned software anyway. ANY decent size house uses proprietary stuff. So all that stupid smokescreen arguments about how AS ain't gonna compete in that marketplace are just straw men.
In the second place, there are many many many many (do you get the point?) programs that do frame by frame animation, and do it very well. We don't need another.
What we do need is for AS to improve upon its "cutout animation" tools -- make them even better. Don't worry, Wes -- South Park isn't the be all and end off of such animation. Look at the stuff you're doing to see. If by "cutout" we accept Gillis' definition (and, as I said, I do) it's really just another way of saying it's not a frame by frame program. It uses both bones AND vector interpolation to animate, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So -- in that respect I'm the anti-Gillis: I firmly believe Mike should not even slightly consider FBF enhancements. Anyone who needs this can pick any one of a dozen or more programs that do this and use them in conjunction with TB. What AS *should* do is improve bones, improve vector morphing, improve scripting, add functionality to the interface, etc. etc. etc. There's a ton of stuff on Mike's plate that takes WAY higher precedence.