I just started using Anime Studio 7 today. Recently I have been looking for a good program for creating a cartoon series and I tried out toon boom but called it quits when it couldn't even render to the resolution I had specified.
Anyway I opened Anime Studio and have had trouble with a few operatins that should be simple.....
I have looked everywhere in the help file but I cannot find how to simply delete the default character that appears when the program starts. No i know that i can just start my own project but it is bothering me that I cannot figure out such a basic task.
I worked out that the characters bones can be deleted with backspace but as for the character itself I am stumped.
I'm pretty new too. I don't think there is a "delete" (ed: of the character) per se, but you can pretty easily press [ctrl]+n, and that will open a new document... it'll ask you if you want to save your old doc, and you can answer "no".
Go to Edit>Preferences
There you can select your own startup file or just an empty document.
PD: Anyway, to delete an entire character, go to the layers window, select the bone layer you want and click the delete (garbage can) button. I don't recommend you this for the startup file, anyway, if you delete the character and save, you'll lost the startup character for ever. Plus you will be always working over the startup file, which is very insecure, in my opinion.
Thanks for the replies everybody. I might not even need such an advanced program anyway.....
lets say that I make my characters in photoshop and want to then bring them into an animation program. Would anime studio be ideal for this or should I be looking at a different app?
Meneedit wrote:...Would anime studio be ideal for this or should I be looking at a different app?
It's an impossible question to answer:
1. We don't know what kind of animation you want to do
2. We don't know what your definition of 'ideal' means
3. We don't know what experience and skills you have
4. This is an Anime Studio forum. What do you expect most people to say?
5. Etc...
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
I have no drawing skills. the type of animation i would like to make would be like angry beavers, ren and stimpy
You see the contradiction yourself, don't you? Ren and Stimpy was animated by John Kricfalusi. You surely will find not many people who would more emphasize the ability to draw before you could animate ...
These shows were done by artists who at least spent 20 years of their life just with drawing. Sorry to bust your bubble, but without any drawing skills you're lost.
There's other ways of doing interesting and funny animation. I recommend you adjust your expectations, otherwise it's going to be a very frustrating experience for you.
Thats ok, thanks man. i'll just play around with a few different programs and see what sort of approach I can take. I guess i should start drawing a bit too.
That's the spirit. Drawing is fundamental, for animation as well as for design. You don't have to be an excellent drauhghtsman to become a good animator, but you need the experience of getting your imagination onto paper with a simple tool like a pencil. Only after such a training you can expect to do the same with different tools, like software.
hi.
a loooooong time ago I did a cut out animation of someone elses drawing. I used MS Paint. I took the character apart then and repositioned arms, legs etc to make loads of FBF images (about one or two fps!!) which I put in a GIF animator.
then I grew up a bit. and I put the FBF images into Windows moviemaker over backgrounds that I'd scavenged from the web.
then I grew up a bit more and I only made FBF of the moving bits, but still composited in moviemaker.
.... and so on and so on ... I'm still more of a technician than an artist; and my tracing skills are slightly better than my drawing skills (and both are in the "Learner" category). What seems like 200 years later I'm still learning. But now I have ASP, Photoshop, Premiere... and I find that I can answer some questions as well as ask them now.
So @meneedit ... go for it. Good tools don't make a good engineer - but they do help if you can learn to use them well. And you can go from plagiarism towards your own personal style... but be prepared for the long journey
I agree! just go for it! if you get blocked by ideas that you can't do this or can't do that you will never do anything, but if you just do it and keep trying you will see improvement from day to day.
I read a little book called The artist way hand book by julia cameron. Changed my life. When I read it and went through some of the weekly projects, the couple that have always stuck with me are the artists date and the morning pages. When I started I was a stick figure artist, and then I made a goal to sketch 1 page in a sketchbook per day, which turned into 2 or 3 on some days. sometimes I was tired and it was a shaded circle or some quick shape or shading practice, but some days I spent the whole evening on a page or 2. I am no da vinci now thats for sure, but I feel like I am a step above a stick figure. I am happy with my progress even though it may be slow, I would have never got motivated to do this without reading the book. Thanks Julia!
