Moho Animation Forum

(DOES NOT MATTER IF YOU POST OR NOT, PLEASE DO VOTE!!!!)

Hello all!

I spent some time lately learning Anime Studio from top to bottom, I came to realize how powerfull and still easy to use it is, so I decided to use it for an animated short.

Problem is, I work full time in an animation studio, giving me little time for my own project.

I see two ways to achieve my goal, either I win the lottery, or I produce learning material and content to be sold online.

Here is what I propose...

A web site where I would devellop on my project as it goes, on that same site I would offer different products where I would teach all that I have learned over the 30+ years I have been animating.

Professional, high resolution videos on subjects like...

Beginner's to intermediate character animation in Anime Studio.
Advanced character animation in Anime studio.
Advanced facial and lipsynch animation using morph blends (awsome stuff)
How to produce a short film in Anime Studio, from concept to final render, how to implement workflow with other softwares etc.
Designing and creating production quality characters
Designing a production quality background and how to setup shots for it.

Several production quality and fully rigged characters, each with walk and run cycle actions
Free tutorial on how to modify them for your own production

And many more I have in mind.

The site would also have free tutorials, files like props and more.

This would allow me to finance the movie I plan on making with Anime Studio.

Also, I thought animation and CG for several years, the site would have free samples of chapters of the videos.

I would like to see some feedback on this, as I would start this, if the need is there, in about 2 weeks.

G

It would be nice to have access to advanced tutorials. But I suspect that demand for advanced materials is too low for any real return on your time investment. I bet there would be slightly more interest in really thorough beginner tutorials -- especially if you put a good sample on youtube so that people become familiar with you. A tutorial that would probably save beginners a lot of time would be one explaining the advantages and disadvantages of all the commonly used rigging methods and how character design influences rigging. I think that's the steepest learning curve in anime studio. A lot of free tutorials focus on explaining how to do things. If your tutorials brought in some theoretical discussion to make sense of it all, I think that would round out the understanding needed to work in AS.

I personally might be interested in intermediate/advanced tutorials, but a lot would depend on the cost and the topic I'm studying/practicing at any given moment.

Hello lwaxana, thanks for your reply!

The goal here is not to make millions of course, but just to bring extra money to get me going with my project.

This post and poll is to have a feel of things and see what peoples actually need for learning materials and if they are willing to spend a bit for it.

There have been over 1300 new members to the forum in the last 12 months, I am sure not all are still active readers of the forum but maybe most still are.

Most should be newbies so you are probably right about making tutorials for beginners.

The goal is to sell to many at low prices, with good quality content. I rather sell 100 at 10$ then 10 at 30$.

Make pro level characters at low price, so newbies could have fun making animation with them.

The plan is to make a blog for the project, where peoples will be able to ask questions et follow along the developement of the project.

I wonder how many of the 12000+ members are still coming to the forum.

G

Members such as DK, heyvern, artfx, mikdog have tried selling various resources to the community. I don't how well they have done (and I wouldn't expect them to divulge their sales data), but my impression is that the market is not huge.

That 12,000+ memberlist is tricky. Most members never post at all, 90% never break single digits. I estimate 50 to 100 members regularly visit the forum.

Personally, I rather see your exceptional talent on your project than on tutorials.

I tried it... and...

Now I wish I had just gone with a free site or a donation site. Once you add money to the mix then you can't get out of it. You are bound to it.

I would suggest you start out with a free blog. Maybe have a simple donate link. If you feel the work load is something you can handle then think carefully about the possibility of paid tutorials in the future.

Once you have money involved with this it becomes a job. You HAVE to make tutorials. You make them not because it's fun or you want to ... You HAVE TO. You HAVE to keep the site up to date. It's a job.

If you can't maintain that over the long term, keep the site free or donation only. Or only sell individual tutorials.

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You must have high bandwidth. Fios or Cable. This is a must. You don't want to dread uploading your tutorials because it ties up your internet for hours. Some of my tutorials were quite large and I uploaded several at time.

Don't skimp on screen capture software. Buy something GOOD. Camtasia Pro for PC or iShowU on the mac for example. I am sure there are many others to check out. Get a good headset or bluetooth mic.

Keep in mind that the screen capture software must then encode the recordings for export after they are edited. I have a relatively fast PC and recently access to very fast Mac. This process still took quite a bit of time, from 1 to 3 hours depending on the length.

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The mistake I made was thinking only about creating content and NOT the work involved around that, editing, encoding, uploading, repeated over and over, while trying to do other work.

If you do this, make sure you really have the time to devote to it.

-vern

Well, I don't have any experience whatsoever with what you're wanting to do but here are my 2 cents.

Donation sites : there's this really great slasher movie review site called hysteria-lives.co.uk (I love slasher movies). It was possible to donate and since I loved the site, I did just that. I received a mail from the maker of the site thanking me and saying that I was actually the first to donate (while it was online for quite some time). There's also a comic site called thenoobcomic.com which caters to the MMORPG community (like World of Warcraft). It has a counter showing how much have been donated. It's not a lot. I don't have full figures about donation sites but it seems to me that when you rely on charity, you will be disappointed.

Banners : Mondo Mini Shows (home of the Happy Tree Friends and other animations) relies on commercials. Looking at how many people are involved in making these animations, it seems to me there is some money in that.

Books, CDs, DVDs : the program Blender is free, of course, but the books are not. Buying the book supports development of Blender (and the animations that are made to further it, like the Elephant's Dream and Big Buck Bunny). A community can make books as well. A good example is the "C FAQ" by Steve Summit about the programming language C which has been in print for quite some time now and is on the list of "must have" books for C programmers. The C FAQ is available online, the book just has the online version and a little bit extra but I guess people just love to have a book and are willing to pay for it. The C community also had several contributors of the newsgroup comp.lang.c make a book together : "C Unleashed".

A lot of software might be brilliant but it will not be popular simply due to the lack of proper documentation. Linux might be a great OS but it's not as popular as Windows with programmers and software houses. A lot of software written for Linux has the adagium "the source code IS the documentation". This might be fine and cost effective for hobby programmers but professional programmers simply want an authorative piece of documentation where they can find the things they want to do quickly. And it doesn't matter that it costs money because it costs way more money to figure out things for yourself. Microsoft has the greatest documentation and is highly popular with programmers for that.

I believe that there is a market for making books (with CD or DVD) for Anime Studio Pro. Right now I can only find 1 book and 1 training CD on Amazon. I even think SmitMicro should support such an initiative if they want AS to be a success. And you won't get stuff like "this site hasn't been updated for over a month".

I know exactly how you feel mate I've been giving myself headaches trying to work out ways to help finance my own projects. I thought about doing tutorials too but I'd feel awkward about charging.
I think ArtFX had it right in his informative .pdf book when he mentions that people will buy even a very short film on DVD/BluRay if it comes with a 'making of'. I know I buy DVD's such as the Blender projects and others. To support them yes (because I admire them for getting a project completed) but also because I just love seeing how they achieved what they did even if it often doesn't show me anything new - there's always that chance...

I know that doesn't help with your present project but maybe it would go a way to financing your next if you could create a 'making of' as you go along on this present film?

I'm sort of doing that now. That's partly the reason I'm doing my blog so I have a library of pictures and info that I can create maybe a book or something at some point on completion of the film.

Sorry I'm rambling on but you have one customer here atleast for your short film and 'making of' DVD / BluRay

Hello again

First of all, thanks for the great posts here, very much apreciated.

neeters_guy, thanks for your praise and I was also looking for infos on the forum members, hard to find any.

Vern, you and I have been community members like this one, or the Animation Master forum for a long time, we both know how much work helping out takes sometimes. I made some pretty good tutorials for AM many years ago, then I got frustrated and then the incident happenned, enough said about that

If I am not mistaken, your site goes on a subcription formulae, you pay and amount a month and you access the whole enchilada, if I got it right. Problem with that aproach is the commitment you need to make to your site, you need to put out good stuff every month, or peoples feel cheated, but it is hard for a working man, even when well intended, to keep it up.

What I had in mind was more in the line of making a full blown tutorial, high resolution, with files and the such and make it available for download for say 20-30 dollars. This way you can make tutorials only when you have the time, less strain on the nerves

As for bandwidth, I rent a pretty fast server with unlimited bandwidth or at least enough of it for hundreeds of downloads a month.

Ever heard of Nendo, the ancester of wings3D? It had a great recording feature, allowing to record modeling sessions that we're very small and which peoples could run back in Nendo. Was a great way to learn, also, you did not need recording software. I had a look at the sdk and I think it could be done for AS, even though I am just scratching Lua at the moment.

I also thought about donations, but peoples are usually, not always, but usually penny picking.

Paul, there is a book for both 5 and 6 from SM, both by Mike I think, have not read any of those but someone on the forum might shed some light on those. The thing is, the best general books will only get you that far, because they teach you to work the tools but usually not how to put that knowlwdge to work.

Even the tutorials on those books usually teach you basic ways of using the tools, not how to get you in business in animation.

Same goes with video tutorials giving a visual tour of AS, they can only get you that far.

The "making of" idea is great. I thought of something similar, make a short, of the highest quality, and series of video tutorials to teach how to make it,of course you put all the short files along the tutorials. Also though of making a "making of" software independant but using AS, which would also help selling AS Pro to a broader range of animators who might not have heard of it, or ar misleaded by it's name.

Lot to cover here, this still might be an option, which is why I posted this.

Again, a huge thank for the posts.

And Peoples, do not be shy, vote, even if you do not post!

G

I think your idea of having one-time downloadables for each tut is the way to go, as opposed to a blanket monthly fee. I would gladly pay for a high quality tut on production-quality character building and use. The other topics you mention interest me less.

But I encourage you to keep the costs low, say, under 20 per tut, but just keep cranking them out. The trick, I would think, is to make sure you have enough stuff to keep the pros coming back (and they will if your stuff is good) but at the same time feeding the newbies because there are more of them out there.

If you have downloads rather than subscription, there is less pressure to keep a monthly assembly line going and you can enjoy the educational process more, moving at your own pace. The key is to make every single tut a viable, self-contained lesson. Of course, do things in parts for complex information, but each tut should stand alone, imparting its own secrets if you will, so that the buyer feels like they got good value everytime they buy from you.

Cartoon Solutions is a good model for this, I think.

I purchased small tuts and pre-rigged characters from him just to check out the quality. 11 bucks here, 6 bucks there. Strictly as a learning tool. I was so impressed I eventually ended up buying many more, including the 99. drawing lesson. I never wanted a refund and have been pleased with the speedy no-hassle download and product quality.

As for content, some of the stuff could be explained better and he goes through things pretty quickly. But I figure like any art education, you have to take a little from here and a bit from there to round it all out. Overall, the 2 or 3 things I learned from his lessons/characters helped me tremendously.

Hello there and thanks for your reply.

That's the plan, making afordable, self contained tutorials, at resolution of at least 1024X768, with videos and files.

I agree with about the monthly fees, too much pressure on both sides.

As for cranking them, well, those take good amount of time to make, so maybe two or tree a month would be the count.

So far I got 12 votes, not enough to go with the project, I will give it another two weeks and see if the demand is there!

G

Great idea. Sell tutorial packages. Makes sense and not as demanding as the monthly subscription.

-vern

I'd be interested in most of what's on your list.

Hello all!

As I posted on another thread I am leaving this community for the time being and I should have posted here before I did so, just out of respect.

I am leaving as a protest for the release of ASP7, therefore I will not support ASP or SM in anyway from now on, this includes any making of tutorials.

I may and probably will use ASP, 5.6 or 6.2 for my upcoming 2 years project but will not post any new stills or animation to this forum.

I apolagize to anyone who was expecting great things from this, it will not happen and again, I am sorry for the late post on the subject.

Gilles

Sorry for the late reply. I only just saw this thread.
I don't mind sharing information on the forum at all.

I sell some content on CP and it averages about 20-50 dollars a month. Some months are better than others but that is about the average. I don't do any new products anymore because it is too time consuming for the return. On the other hand, I have started a new website called Polliefillers
which revolves around poking fun at Australian politicians.

www.polliefillers.com.au

I make one 20 sec animation per week for free and I get 100 people + a day hitting the site to see the latest animation. I have put Google Adsense on the site and it is paying well. I am averaging 5 dollars a day but it's growing. As a bonus I am being contacted by producers from all over australia and have just signed a contract for a short TV series and my animations are broadcast nationally by a popular news show.
It's the best thing I could have done. My advice would be don't be overly precious of your work just be prolific!!!!

Cheers
D.K

The problem with CP is a persons work is lost too easily, just too much and difficult to find what you want quickly. I tried looking for something recently and using their search engine, I found what I wanted on page 5 - I found much of what was being offered was not related to 2D animation but for illustrators. I can see therefore why it is difficult for producers to see a return.

At the month I am working on a pay-content site, specifically to by-pass this issue. The site specialises in one type of content - simple, peole know where to find the content. If the site fails to be profitable, then at least its my fault in not marketing it correctly, and not the too-big nature of CP.

Rhoel