Thursday, February 28, 2013

Do we really need Adobe?

 For my first D.A.D. short film I used Flash 8 for the animation and After Effects for compositing and a small amount of visual effects. Staring a new film should be easy because I have all of the assets from previous files. But, I'm sick of Flash.

My  motto going into a new episode of D.A.D. is 0% budget 100% creative control. Which means any of the current overpriced Adobe products are out of the question. Fortunately there are some excellent affordable alternatives.

Toon Boom Animate v2 is what I will be using for all of the character animation on my new short.
at $599  it's significantly cheaper than the current (and horribly unstable) Flash CS6. 
For 2d digital animation Animate has everything I wanted Flash to have such as a dedicated camera exportable effects and much more.

As mentioned in a previous post I'm currently working on sound design for the new short.
My favourite sound editing software is the free open source program Audacity.  For basic cutting ,editing and simple effects it is fantastic. 

For Compositing and added VFX I may still have to use After Effects as I have yet to find anything cheaper or open source that can match it. If anyone knows of an alternative let me know.


Aside from my film I also to do the odd digital cartoon or illustration.  Photoshop is the go to program most of the time but I also really love Artrage v4.  It only costs about $50.

I should also say that all of these new programs I'm using are very stable. In comparison the last time I used Flash CS5 it would frequently crash and worst of all corrupt my file.

Anyway thanks for stopping by and come back soon.


Secret desires of an Animator

Still working on my films sound design but here is a little something I made this morning.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Sneak peak

Yes I'm working on another D.A.D. short. So far all of the rough poses and timing are done and now I'm working on the sound design. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

Monday, February 18, 2013

John Carter vs a Great White Ape of Mars.

My poor neglected blog. I've been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs classic John Carter trilogy for the first time and was inspired to create this piece.