toonertime wrote:i am just curious if you had considered Flash,
because I know it is used by other professionals.
I haven't seen Flash used since version five, but I remember disliking the software then.
We used it by producing traditional, handdrawn animation that was then scanned, vectorized by tracing it in Illustrator, then importing and timing it in Flash for use within a computer game.
I absolutely avoided creating artwork within Flash itself - as did most of the other animators.
Even if I am a skilled draftsman, I am limited to cut out techniques (or pre rigged 3D characters) in the computer, as I have never been able to get a decent line out of a Wacom tablet, especially not when you have to be as precise as in animation. I cannot trace a line with a Wacom tablet without going all over the place. (I can do it on paper with a single swift stroke of a pencil)
As an alternative, I profoundly hate vector tools when drawing (horribly sterile even if I ever technically get a halfway decent drawing out of it - I just hate all bezier based drawings for being dead and sterile) and really need a free hand style; I was not even able to clean up my own hand drawn animation in Illustrator using bezier curved shapes, it all came out horrible, and we had other people going over my sketches. (And I still wept over the sterile end products)
The only 2D animation I ever did on the computer before trying out Solo was with D-Paint and TAS on the Amiga, way back, and with Aura on the PC, that since then evolved into Mirage. In all cases, incredibly wobbly lines derived from a free hand drawing method, were part of the animation style: it had a charm of its own, but in the production that we have in pre-production at this time this is really not an option at all.
(Even after a month of animating with Wacom tablets, my lines still went all over the place, and the horrible drawings I did only worked within the animation, that depended much more on funny movements than on well drawn poses.)
Whatever handdrawn animated elements will be incorporated in the current prodution will be done on an animation desk with pencil and paper where I have full control over what I'm doing, then scanned, and cleaned up by my collegue in a free hand, loose style, before importing it into the software and using it as stock footage (such as head turns).
We try to keep this to a minimum because of the time involved.
The actual animation I'll do without drawing directly into the scenes, by moving around rigged characters. I know about weight, I know about timing and spacing and body language: but I will refrain from drawing during the animation, contrary to any production I have worked on before, where I hand drew every single line.
Flash does not really seem to be the way to go for me. In my memory, animating in Flash was so far removed from how I animate on paper that the idea of animating in Flash itself made me shiver. There wasn't even onion skinning; how the hell is one supposed to animate subtle acting without a light table? Flash 5 seemed to be more restrictive than anything I'd seen before: that's why all the art work was drawn on paper, including all inbetweens.
Years later, I've seen some nice things done in Flash - Arj & Poopy, even though that is a bit static sometimes, and some clips of the animated feature Phil Nibbelink did all by himself - but I think both drew their animation directly within the software, and that is defenitely not for me.
The appeal of Solo or Anime studio for me lies solely with the possibilty to move rigged characters around in a similar fahion like in 3D animation, I know how to get entertaining animation out of that up to a certain limit.
The artwork will look good because I will not have drawn it with a Wacom tablet.
For creating actual artwork I'm limited to pencil on paper only. For animating on the computer, I want to completely avoid drawing on Wacom tablets within the computer. To me, that does not sound like Flash at all.
But as I said, I have no idea what happened to Flash since version 5. so correct me if I'm prejudiced about the software.
