Moho Forum

Lost Marble wrote:I'm working on Anime Studio full time

Phew!

I'm working on Anime Studio full time

Now that is one of the best pieces of news I've had all year!!

Thanks for sharing Mike and I look forward to the fruits of your labours.
Dave

Rudiger wrote:If I say negative things about Anime Studio, it's only because I can see the great potential in it and hate the thought of it going to waste. However, hearing that Smith-Micro is putting money into it, and Mike is leading the development has certainly made my whole year!

I echo this. It helps a great deal to hear from Mike, even if he can't say much. Knowing that he's still working on the software is a lot of peace of mind for me.

I'm still working to convince the NY animation industry what a gem AS is. I would think that the benefit would be obvious especially considering the economic climate right now. I would think that a tool which a.) cuts production time, b.) brings more of the production in-house instead of being outsourced, c.) reduces the number of employees attached to a production... well I think it should be a no-brainer, but what do I know?

AS is a wonderful software as-is. There's a lot of potential for much more as well and I can't wait to see what's next. I'd really like to see a lot more momentum on this in the world at large... but I'm also kind of happy being one of a handful of people with this secret weapon in their back pocket!

-S

slice11217

I'm still working to convince the NY animation industry what a gem AS is

I had a visit to an animation studio here in up state New York and almost cried when I saw them doing frame by frame cell work for a TV show.

Dale

Lost Marble wrote:Hi guys,

First of all, thanks Vern for standing up for me. I appreciate the support. Thanks too everyone else who's had nice things to say about Anime Studio/Moho. We all like to hate faceless corporations, but inside the company are real people, and I for one am glad that users appreciate the work we do.

Now, speaking of "people inside the company"...here's the news I was hinting at to Vern: As of now, I am working at Smith Micro full time. And I'm working on Anime Studio full time. I can't really get more specific than that - Smith Micro is a publicly-traded company, so I can't make "forward looking statements". But I can tell you the simple facts: I am an employee of Smith Micro who works full time on Anime Studio.

Please rest assured that this is very good news for Anime Studio.

-Mike

Thanks for the info. It's good to know that Anime Studio has solid financial backing and its development team includes the software's originator. That's the way it should be. Long live Anime Studio!

I am working at Smith Micro full time. And I'm working on Anime Studio full time.

All I needed to hear

Lost Marble wrote:Hi guys,

First of all, thanks Vern for standing up for me. I appreciate the support. Thanks too everyone else who's had nice things to say about Anime Studio/Moho. We all like to hate faceless corporations, but inside the company are real people, and I for one am glad that users appreciate the work we do.

Now, speaking of "people inside the company"...here's the news I was hinting at to Vern: As of now, I am working at Smith Micro full time. And I'm working on Anime Studio full time. I can't really get more specific than that - Smith Micro is a publicly-traded company, so I can't make "forward looking statements". But I can tell you the simple facts: I am an employee of Smith Micro who works full time on Anime Studio.

Please rest assured that this is very good news for Anime Studio.

-Mike

Thanks for the update Mike, this is wonderful news! BTW, congratulations on your new day job

Wow. Great to hear from Mike. I just figured AS had seen its day, despite seeing it on the shelves at Best Buy. New hope fore the future! Wonderful.

Lost Marble wrote:Hi guys,
As of now, I am working at Smith Micro full time. And I'm working on Anime Studio full time. .... Please rest assured that this is very good news for Anime Studio. -Mike

This message came in the nick of time for me since after reading this depressing thread, I was almost ready to throw aside AS and jump on the Toon Boom bandwagon.

I have been testing both Toon Boom for many months and Anime Studio Pro for just the past month. After several years of working with Flash animations, I finally realized that that program was really limiting in so many ways and that I had to find a dedicated animation program in order to accomplish my animation goals. Even the new Flash CS4 iteration falls below the necessary requirements. Animation for film or video is what I prefer over web-delivered Flash. And Flash just won't do the job.

So, after trying to figure out if I should go with Toon Boom or with Anime Studio, I thought that I ought to scan this forum for some hints and tips in that direction. Which way to go? Oh, I know! See what the experts have to say. So, I surfed over here, found some great ideas but then got kind of depressed when I read this particular thread.

Even though it seemed kind of clunky to use, I was leaning toward Toon Boom because there were tutorials available for it. ASpro was really difficult for me to learn until I found the VTC Anime Pro tutorials by Mark Bremmer which opened the doors to this wonderful program completely. And the RoseAgent-VideoClips and character pack from Content Paradise helped a lot, too.

So, I was becoming an enthusiastic user until I started reading this depressing thread. I am sure most of you have had the frustrating experience of trying to transfer years worth of your work from one program to another and not succeeding because the the variety of graphics parameters just do not translate to the new software with a simple import-cut-or-paste. I am sure that most of you have spent countless hours re-drawing and copying perfectly good graphics that you have spent a part of your lives working on in other applications but are forced to drudge through the work anyway simply because you have found a better software to showcase your stuff and yet the old graphics just would not transfer without a complete re-draw.

So, as I was testing and comparing both Toon Boom and Anime Studio, this was upmost in my mind: "Will this software do what I want it to do and still be a viable product years from now so that I don't have to re-draw the graphics that I created in it?" I don't know about you guys, but if you are animators, then you aren't afraid of hard work and long hours. But if you are at all like me, then you hate having to re-draw a perfectly good graphic just because it won't work as it is in a new software platform. I like to make new things, not spend my time re-drawing old stuff.

When the AS advertizing claimed that Adobe Illustrator files could be transfered and animated in AS, I was excited. When AS advertizing claimed that bitmaps could be imported and animated, I was thrilled. When the AS advertizing claimed that Flash graphics could be imported and animated, then I just had to have ASpro. That none of these promises were worth a darn, was okay because I am used to that sort of hype from software companies, having spent thousands and thousands of dollars on software that didn't work as advertized and couldn't be returned because (gottcha!) the box had been opened.

And even when some of the excellent posters in this forum pointed out that spending the time in re-drawing was worth it because of the added efficiency of AS, okay, I was convinced and I resigned myself to having to re-draw everything.

However, with the general consensus that the originator of this fine software was letting it drop and that there would not be further development or refinement, I was really very close to just throwing AS aside and beginning the laborious process of moving all my graphics over to the Toon Boom platform, clunky as it is.

So, this note from Mike came at a good time for me, in my ambivalent state of mind. I guess Anime Studio Pro is for me after all .... I guess ... in my ambivalent state of mind. As Lao Tsu wrote, "Something done well once, is done forever." Geeze, I really hate having to re-draw well accomplished art just because the new platform won't support it. And in art, don't you want to have your stuff something that people can watch forever without having to buy an upgrade? This is one reason for prefering a film and video format to ephemeral web delivery, longevity of the product.

Sorry about the rant but these are my reasons for sticking with the program. And thanks to all you fellows who have left so many fine tips in this forum. Us newbies couldn't get by without you.

Hello all!

Cool, that answers a question I had, and yes AS Pro is a great app, I do have a few things I'd love to see in it, but let"s wait and see, we might get a few good surprises!

GC

Glad you are sticking with ASP banjar!

Just to be clear, nothing was said in the AS literature about importing Flash, only AI and EPS. No other info was ever given on the extent of the import of those formats. Most people will read that and "assume" more than is promised. When I first bought Moho, I actually used the AI/EPS import extensively for a few weeks till I got up to speed on the drawing tools. I was perfectly happy with it but realized later it was easier/faster to draw from scratch.

-----

On another note future compatibility with other formats; you CAN export files from AS to Flash, as long as they are optimized for it. So that is a great way to convert from AS to AI or EPS or Flash. Obviously transferring animation won't be so simple but I've used that technique to convert AS files to AI format for print work a few times. It isn't "perfect" but nothing ever is.

When you mentioned the hours spent converting files from one program to another I couldn't help but think that is why I won't be switching from ASP to anything else anytime soon. They will have to pry ASP from my cold dead fingers to get me to switch. At that point animation software and transferring files will be the least of my worries.

-vern

They will have to pry ASP from my cold dead fingers to get me to switch.

I'm totally with you on that, Vern. There's just too much undiscovered country in the scripting. Even if development were dead, I'd have to exhaust the possibilities.

heyvern wrote:Glad you are sticking with ASP banjar!

Just to be clear, nothing was said in the AS literature about importing Flash, only AI and EPS. ....When you mentioned the hours spent converting files from one program to another I couldn't help but think that is why I won't be switching from ASP to anything else anytime soon.
-vern

Your comments are extremely helpful and I found them so on other parts of the Forum as well when I was lurking around reading threads before registering. Truely, I was ready to re-install Toon Boom when I read this thread with Mike saying that the rumors were untrue. So, thanks for your kind words and great deeds.

But quite frankly, I am trying to find a software that I don't have to transfer stuff to other programs. My main goal is to produce quality animation as trouble-free as possible and which will export into standard video formats. If I can find that, then why would I need anything else?

From my experience Tutorials will make or break the growth of a user base. If you make it easy to learn, it makes sense that new users will be attracted.

AS works fine with any format of video. It's the "Flash" compatibility and AI/EPS import everyone jumps and down over.

I wish I could clone myself. I could spend 24/7 doing tutorials... but it takes away from actually doing stuff. If someone offered my cold hard cash I could do it.

Those video tutorials on that site that just came out appear to be very popular. I'm assuming everyone is looking at the free ones. Is there money in doing tutorials? I hate to be such a capitalist but I got to pay the rent... bring home the bacon... come to papa... Show me the money!

... and so on.

-vern

Well ... why don't we offer Smith-Micro to do some tutorials for the next version?

From the last months of questions here in the forum I know at least a dozen of subjects I could explain better than the poor excuse for a manual does. (No offense to Mike, but it need improvement badly!) Further, I could spice it with some real-world examples, how-to recipes to common tasks.

If SM offered me some reasonable amount of cash, I'd take responsibility for several chapters of a manual/tutorial, complete with website and moving examples (in Flash...). I'd concentrate on the parts I really dig, and leave actions and scripting and 3D rigging to you other guys.