Flashfilmmaker

A few years back a small company named Lost Marble released a rather interesting bit of software which challenged digital animators view of what a vector based animation system could be. The product featured one of the ugliest user interfaces ever designed for an animation product, complete with a clunky and obscure panel structure which didn’t really seem to do anything useful on the surface yet somehow seemed totally necessary. The product also featured a work-flow which seemed to want to lend itself towards the production high quality/high-efficiency animation, however, the drawback was that it all came at the expense of overly complicated usability factor. It seems the company name wasn’t just another clever play with words but rather, a literal reference as to the state of mind the developer of Moho was when he decided to start selling it as a viable animation solution.

Over the years, this is product that has been passed around from company to company like a corporate football, serving as what I can only describe as a clever exit strategy token for any company looking to cut their losses and move on. And so the cycle continues.

Anime Studio 5.6 marks the products the products release under a new company label. There really are no new features or usability improvements to speak of other than a slight change in the box design, the build number is now .1 higher, and some of the marketing materials have been tweaked a bit in their wording. For all intents and purposes nothing of significant consequence has actually changed since version 2.

Having said that, this should not take away from the fact that the core functionality and feature offerings this product makes available, is a work of genius, which, depending on your work style, should be embraced with open arms and perhaps even serve as a viable tool of choice in the animators arsenal.

Julian Stokoe an animation Director from Auckland, New Zealand, uses Anime Studio primarily for filmmaking. While his favorite features include the bones system, advanced shape tweening, and the software’s ability to export to Flash’s swf format, he also expresses a dislike for the products “ineffective curve control”, stating that “it can be complicated to do simple things in frame by frame style”.  Julian states that while the product documentation is rather poor, he highly recommends the forum as a great resource for those interested in learning the software.

Giving this product a negative review would be way to easy, after all, it’s horrible user interface, and counterproductive work flow (in terms of traditional commercial animation production) methodology does speak for itself.

Here’s the thing; in today’s commercial animation community, while many animators are simply looking for ways to re-recreate the traditional hand drawn animation look and feel through the use of more efficient modern digital work flows others are looking for new forms of non-traditional animation.

I have to stress the term “commercial animation” because commercial animation encompasses the idea that  value, efficiency, and overall quality of the development tools will translate into the rendered output which  is crucial to the production of an animated piece that not only will sell but will also return a profit.

If you take away the commercial aspect or motivation from an animation piece then what you have is not commercial but rather experimental. Most of the great works find a balance within how much they can get away with experimentally while maintain the commercial target in mind.

Frank van Moorsel from the Netherlands describes himself as a Hobbyist Animator. Morsel uses Anime Studio primarily for producing non commercial children animation. He states that for his purposes and needs, the package is rather complete without being overly complex.

He also highly recommends the lostmarble.com forums as a way to further ones understanding of the product. “It takes some time to get used to the user interface as it is not 100% the same as a typical MS Windows interface, but this is not a very huge issue for me.”, he explains. He believes there is not a single feature or lack thereof that he dislikes, but he does point out that the render times could use a bit of improvement. His favorite feature is the is not anything within the software but rather forums.

When asked about how he felt about the learning curve he responded, “As an hobbyist I could use the program rather fast after having done all the tutorials, The forum is very helpful when you have a problem. On Amazon I bought a book on this software which illustrates very well all features and how to use them.”.

Experimental animation is such that the techniques and tools used really do not matter because the end result is one where the time spend producing and costs incurred as a result of a production is purposefully overlooked with the conscience knowledge that such an expense will almost always outweigh any potential financial return on ones investment.  The value gained from experimental animation is in experience and perhaps even the discovery of new techniques and workflows that can later be applied to something else in a more efficient manner. Having said that, If your aim is to produce traditional style commercial animation, Anime Studio is provably the worst investment you can ever make.

On the other hand if your looking cast out traditional methodologies and produce modern forms of commercial 2d animation or even dabble in an experimental new form of production work flow, then Anime Studio may just be the answer.

Murray Lock from New Zeland is a graphic artist and animator who feels the program is very simple to set up for cutout animation and simple vector animations and when compared to other “Flash-like” animation tools, Anime Studio is actually easier to learn.

He admits the product documentation is rather basic and offer very little help and further explains that the drawing tool available are just plain terrible.

Murray goe on to say, “I would use this program a lot more if it had decent drawing tools. In fact I would prefer it’s timeline setup to Flash or Toon Boom. It has great potential. I would love Flash to follow Anime Studio’s lead for simplicity of use.”

Despite any of the products marketing rhetoric, Anime Studio does not simplify in any way the production of traditional hand drawn animation (in fact it severely complicates it), nor does it lend itself toward the production of “Anime” any better than any other off the shelf product out there. What Anime Studio does is that it provides a viable production environment for 2D model based animation. It is a tool that combines a three dimensional work environment with the ability to manipulate two dimensional objects while retaining the much needed cinematography concepts that no other 2d animation application has to offer at this time.

There really doesn’t seem to be much of a gray area when it comes to Animate Studio, users of the product either hate it or love it. Largely I suppose this is due to a lack in understanding about the product and its use. On the surface Anime Studio possesses an array of features that would haunt every animators wet dreams including bones, morphing, Inverse Kinematics, a camera system, a 3D development environment, and the list goes on but in practice attempting to use any of these features towards the application of traditional animation is a waste of time. Those who can overlook the traditional and adapt to the software’s unconventional work flow, have found great success in achieving their results.

Gilbert L. Concepcion, an animator from the Philippines enjoys the software’s ability to easily allow you create basic tweens, use inverse kinematics, a camera system and three dimensional depth sorting. He especially likes the software’s ability to produce smooth vector animation and how the bones feature is incorporated as a user interface element.  He feel the documentation is sufficient enough for beginners to become acquainted with the software and that Anime Studio is a perfectly viable alternative for either Flash or Toon Boom.

I am inclined to agree, Anime Studio is certainly a viable alternative but must stress that this is only the case if your animation work flow is strictly centered around cut-out style animation and 2d modeling. For animators who prefer a more traditinal approach, products like Adobe Flash, Toon Boom and Retas are much more suitable for their cel based systems and drawings toolsets.

Anime studio is the only vector based 2d animation system (that I am aware of) which makes use of a true 3D environment in which to work and create. Unlike other products such a Toon Boom:Studio, Toon Boom: Animate, or Digital Video: The TAB which merely reproduce a multi-plane environment similar to the techniques employed by Disney in their early films, Anime Studio’s development environment really does immerse you in a true three dimensional environment in which you can place cameras “shoot” a scene from various angles, and manipulate your graphical elements along any axis you deem fit.

Fabian Harmanus from Darmstadt, Germany feels Anime Studio is a great time saver with plenty of extras and that the product can be used even in situations requiring a more traditional approach. His favorite feature is the Magnet Tool and feel that the combination of a bones system and animatable layer ordering is absolutely brilliant.  Fabian points out that one of the drawbacks he’s noted is that larger swf files exported from Anime Studio often generate errors and that importing swf files into the program will software alter the original colors slightly.  He also warns that importing of large still-image sequences can put an excessive amount of strain on the system.

Fabian goes on to say, “The basics are learned fast with the documentation, but getting to know all the tricks can take a long time. Compared to other software such as Flash, there is not much literature available, but nevertheless the Anime Studio Pro forum is very good for learning.”

Proper documentation of a product is essential. It is not a matter of documenting the products features in a clinical and technical manner, it is more about providing source of reference in a clear and understandable format where the user can quickly get up to speed in the operation of the product itself.

Moho’s (Anime Studio’s) documentation has always been pretty lacking. It offers a few tutorials to get you started but not much in the theory behind whats behind each of the concepts and techniques. It’s apparent that the writer understands the software and its operation but does he/she understand animation itself? The developers have also placed a higher emphasis on the forum as learning tool, which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as they themselves are on call to offer guidance. From what I have seen this is not the case, although the community itself does a great job at supporting each other through the learning curve. The documentation alone should be enough to give the user a general understanding of the software operation, functions, technique, and recommended work flow. And it should nor rely on the community self educating each other or the purchase of any additional media such as books or videos in order to learn the software. Books and videos courses are there to further refine ones technique and develop skills that are beyond the scope of the manual.

The Key Features

Character animation through bones and object parenting. Bones can be used for morphing and manipulating shapes as well as creating and animating complete pre-rigged 2d models.

The 3d Authoring environment allows you to make use of cameras, and all elements can be shot and manipulated in 3d space. This is true 3d and not multi-plane which is a technique that merely manipulates objects along a “z” axis. To put this into perspective(no pun intended), imagine the ability to create a tree or a house in your scene where you can rotate your camera around and be able to capture your environment from all sides.

A multiplane environment simply manipulates a camera and the graphical objects along a one dimensional plane, (the z-axis) which in turns gives the illusion of depth.

Multiple Camera feasibility. Imagine creating a scene once and being able to export that scene from multiple camera set ups so as to allow for more options in terms of editing and and telling your story.

Swapable object layers which allow you animate individual child graphics within a parented structure. Think of this feature as a 2D version of  “morph targets” in a 3d model. While a characters head is part of a model, that head for example can have many “morph targets” which would allow for moving the head around using the IK tools, but at any time you can call different states of that head depending on whether the character is sad, happy, angry, or even change the state of the mouth depending on the speech he is performing.

ffm’s Recommended Usage

This is a program that lends itself best to a form of 2d model based animation. Some people inaccurately refer this as a  “cut-out style animation” but in fact the work flow is much more complex and sophisticated than mere cut-out style. It is my belief, this product should be used and treated as 3d application that is optimized for 2d graphics.

The best practice for working with Anime Studio would be a work flow that involves creating and rigging up 2D models and setting up 2D elements within a 3D environment in order to produce a stylized scene.

The ideal tools set for this workflow, should also include a third party graphics application such as Adobe illustrator or Flash, or even Photoshop for the creation and optimization of the initial graphics that will be used to animate within Anime Studio. The built in drawing tools are substandard and should be avoided, exept for basic editing functions rather than for creating creating from scratch.

Traditional Claymation or even live action,or  stop motion animators should find this tool of particular significance because they can prepare fully rigged 2D models of their their claymation puppets or live actor photographs and animate them within a digital environment.

The work flow should also be of significance to 3D animators who can export the various pieces of their 3d models, recreate them as 2d models and animate them in such a way that will significantly reduce the typical rendering times often associated with rendering actual 3D animation.

It will in almost all circumstances be much more efficient and to create your graphics outside the software while using focusing Anime Studios strengths towards composing, layout, and animation pre rigged figures. In fact animator would (and should) use a third party application such as Flash or illustrator to create their graphical assets.

Those assets would then be imported into Anime Studio in order to assemble 2D models for animation, or 3d environments can be assembled and shot.  The resulting footage can then be edited or further composited within a product such as After Effects for a truly professional finish. This work flow pretty much nullifies a good 75% or more of the features naively available within the software, such as the powerful line and drawing tools which, as powerful as they may be are simply just not practical enough to make use of, in an environment where efficiency and speed are important.

Filmmakers can use this product as a cheap and highly efficient previz tool. Basic storyboard elements can be assembled in 3d space and shot using the camera system to create quick previsualizations of scenes and sequences.

Traditional animators can use this tool, not as a way to create character animation but rather to supplement it. 3D environments using 2D elements can be created and mundane tasks such as animating non-organic objects like robots, vehicles, or even some organic objects like trees can be further facilitated through the use of of the bones system. The results can later be composted with the traditional character animation.