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furtherelement
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Apr 27, 2014 2:07 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA USA
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Howdy!

Post by furtherelement »

Hey AS forum folks,

Thought I'd say a quick hello and let you all know I'm not a forum-haunting bot! While I've been doing motion graphic work for quite a while and spend most of my professional days in the After Effects world, I'm just picking up Anime Studio and have some fairly ambitious plans I'd like to chase with it. I've always enjoyed drawing and love the freedom of expression, the creative possibilities that animation (in all of its many forms) can offer. I looked into Toonboom packages (have a copy of TB studio), but it looked like ASP was going to offer me more of what I wanted at a price far more competitive than the upscale TB software.

I first became aware of ASP back when it was Moho when I encountered some videos done by a Russian gentleman called Pasha Egorov. At the time I was recording an album of pop/rock music and thought some of his treatments would work well on videos for some of my material, but right and left turns prevented me from getting into it at that time.

I'm still crossing that gulf from the world of Adobe tools and interfaces to the ASP way, and it's been a little challenging finding tutorials that work well for me. I finally discovered Mark Bremmer's video tuts for ASP 9 (available on Safari Books Online), and those are currently working the best for me. I really appreciate that he also seems to have come from an Adobe background and calls out the quirks in ASP as he sees them - every software package has them and I find that approach clear and helpful. He seems to cover the features comprehensively, but knowing what and where your clothes are is never the same as dressing yourself!

ASP looks like a great program, and I'm confident it will do what I'm looking for, but as a new initiate to this software, it really does take a while to figure out the subtle differences between available platforms. There are plenty of analogies to After Effects functions, but at least as many that represent an entirely new workflow. Always learning!

So, thanks to all of you who contribute here- this forum is an invaluable resource!

Cheers,
Matt
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Nicohk92
Posts: 269
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 4:31 pm

Re: Howdy!

Post by Nicohk92 »

Hey Matt. Cool introduction. I have been using asp for a few years now and as it gets richer and richer, I find myself using it more and more.
I used to do all my motion graphic with Apple Motion. Yes I know After effect is better but I am (was? was..) an fcp guy and honestly Motion can do almost everything AE does and faster in my opinion.

There is a little bit of learning curve starting on asp but I've seen worst. Take it from me, If I was a super geek able to learn easily and understand methods straight away, i'd already be on Maya. The thing is there's still a lot I remain to master already on asp which is to say how complete your tool set is.
I still haven't used smartbones enough to have digested it as second nature for example (I intend to get back on it).

Personally I hate video tutorials (maybe I have a.d.d) and much prefer finding my answers in a text. The manual gives a good round up. It may fall short on some details so you can always fall back on this forum which is indeed very helpful. The people are great and always happy to help (after searching your question first of course). It's the first time I actively take part in a software forum and it feels like a small community (when i imagine Adobe's community must be huge and impersonal). The program itself evolves and it seems to the rhythm of the dialogue taking place here so it's pretty cool to feel heard.

The first big thing I noticed when starting is the fact that any change makes a keyframe automatically. Easy to forget it when coming from another soft.
There is also the whole thing about frame zero and to be hones,t only recently am I starting to own the concept fully. It kind of forces you to plan your shots well, create and do most changes on frame zero (or if you're sloppy like me, you'll end up wasting time sliding back keyframes, looking for others and other head-scratching oddities you will surely have cause). Tho I think this is more flexible with V10. I feel like reading the manual again after this.

I love asp cause it is really powerful and it doesn't play games with you. By that I mean that, sure it sometimes crashes, but for me it's never been for some obscure reason. A litlle troubleshooting can tell you quickly if when there's a problematic layer or just too much to deal with. I never had a bug I couldn't resolve in more than a few hours and since it autosaves all the time, I've never lost anything. Overall it's a very reliable little soldier.

Don't expect to be able to replace AE fully with ASP yet. the innitial use is a slightly different so you 'll find totally new horizons on one hand and loose some simple things you got used to on AE. Color correction tools and text effects are among the few things asp needs to compete on that field.
Actually this year i started two projects thinking i'd use asp only for some elements and ended up using it exclusively.

Particles are super easy, Brushes are great, I've just recently reached a good level with the camera and it's very well made, the list goes on and on.

And my gf is waiting on me to watch GoT so I gotta go.


BtW I'm only intermediate at animation and really writing here frequently for the past couple months but you can ask many questions are other people are way beyond our level.

Welcome and good luck in this new world
furtherelement
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Apr 27, 2014 2:07 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA USA
Contact:

Re: Howdy!

Post by furtherelement »

Thanks Nico! I think I have a pretty good idea where ASP will fall in the scope of my projects, but I'm always open to surprises. Do members here cross-post to the Animator's Forum at kellytown.com?
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