Does anyone feel like me?

[chucky]

l actually disagree with the idea that anime studio has come as far as it needs to . I think just as the horse and cart became the automobile, so should AS become something more than it currently is.
If Mike is really developing similar tools for flash, (puke) surely that would be a conflict of interest and he may be contractually obliged to cease all work on AS.
If that is the case, then this is probably the hayday for anime and we shall see it become forgotten and lost to history.... just as Amiga was white-anted and destroyed, so shall anime by flash and we shall all have to jump aboard Adobe's ship of overcharged fools , deal with its crappy interface, and just suck it up.

I so hope this is all paranoid nonsense and we shall see a great big shiny Anime Studio Pro 6 before the year is out, with new Features, more effects, flexible, repositionable gradients, a reworked timeline and text improvements.....I don't mind paying a bit more for such a worthy software as ASP is, Mike, are you out there? there?.... there?.... ther .... the. .

[synthsin75]

Well with the last update Mike promised AS developement would be safegaurded for the future. So I'm gonna hold out hope for AS until I absolutely, positively have to face its demise.

[mkelley]

I'd have to reevaluate my whole glowing Anime Studio world.

But why, Wes?

Unlike Chucky, I don't see any problem with AS as it is. Sometimes you just need to realize when enough is enough. And 2D animation ain't like 3D -- there really is only so much you can do.

Look at it this way -- Disney's 2D animation classics (made without ANY computer help) are still fantastic 50 years later. But even 10 years later 3D films look pretty old and archaic. 3D definitely can continue to advance, but 2D is pretty much 2D, no matter how you slice it.

Or, to make one more argument, the biggest "break-through" in 2D animation in the last 50 years was the multi-plane camera... and we can do this with ease in AS. I just don't see a huge need to have AS be developed anymore.

But, like I said before, it would be wonderful if Mike (or someone) added new things to AS I can't even imagine. I'd take them. But I'm also equally happy we have what we have. You can create art (fine or not ;>) that will last for many many decades to come with it. What more can you want?

[synthsin75]

For the most part, you're right Mike (mkelley). AS is already pretty solid. I think I'd worry most about only being able to use AS on an old, decrepit computer, years from now. (I need to start taking REALLY good care of my current machine NOW!! )

But there is some untapped potential. At the very least, I'd like to see the scripting access opened up as much as possible.

[chucky]

Hi M Kelley,
Don't get me wrong with what I am about to say, I am not frothing at the mouth when I say this
l can't imagine why you could think that this software has come as for as it needs. Are Disney still painting on cels....?.... no....
Of course As is cool software, but surely, if even one person can imagine an advancement, then without doubt there is the possibility for advancement, otherwise I'd be sitting in a cave spitting red muck around my hand and winning the hearts of all the local cave girls for my dazzling artwork.
Is it not true that anime doesn't always give an accurate replay in perfect time and we also have to render effects over and over to get desirable results.?
Is it also not true that ASPRO produces glitchy line breaks and has problems with swf and does not render to. gif?
The graph mode is still foetal and bone layer parenting could improve somewhat.
These may be relatively small issues, but I think they are significant enough to warrant some attention
You know I love ASPRO, but I can want progress, why not?- It's human nature.

[mkelley]

(I need to start taking REALLY good care of my current machine NOW!! )

I wouldn't worry all that much. Even if we lay out the minimum that Vista will be supported we're looking at nearly a decade. Add the lifespan of a decent computer (or two -- they're basically commodities, as even the sub-$500 netbook I just bought runs AS just fine) at the end of that and I suspect you can milk the current AS for nearly 20 years. That ought to be enough for almost anyone (if no one has brought out something as good or better than AS in all that time I'd eat my present CPU).

Of course, for me 20 years is about my animation lifespan, so my worries are lesser <bg>.

I have some experience along these lines -- I'm still running a $2K program on a Win2000 machine (it won't run on anything else). We're going on a decade now and I have no reason to suspect I can't keep it running another 10 years (no alternative there, as the company went out of business and nothing else can do what it does).

And, Chucky, regardless of how you and I feel the reality is that AS is unlikely to be developed further. One thing I've learned in my years is to accept those things I cannot change, and I think that would be excellent advice in this case.

[chucky]

M,
I'm not that naiive to believe that my feelings would change anything of this nature, I have never said that and I never will.
I do however thing ASPRO does need development, whether it gets it or not.

[heyvern]

You are of course assuming that AS would just cease to exist if Mike or SM stopped development. It could get "sold" or become open source (personally I would hate that) but even so, with the kind of power it has, its popularity and devotion by so many of its users and as polished and easy to use as it is I don't see it disappearing. Even if Mike kept it alive on his own and only did small updates once a year or even two years I'd be thrilled.

----

I suppose if Mike did have something to do with bones in Flash (we don't know this for sure) AND that feature become as good as AS bones... and AS flounders... <sigh> I could always switch to Flash... ick. Not my favorite choice. I really like AS.

-vern

[slice11217]

Look at it this way -- Disney's 2D animation classics (made without ANY computer help) are still fantastic 50 years later. But even 10 years later 3D films look pretty old and archaic. 3D definitely can continue to advance, but 2D is pretty much 2D, no matter how you slice it.

Or, to make one more argument, the biggest "break-through" in 2D animation in the last 50 years was the multi-plane camera... and we can do this with ease in AS. I just don't see a huge need to have AS be developed anymore.

Um, I don't know that I agree entirely with this passage. On a technical note, the multiplane camera was invented 75 years ago, not 50, and if you want to stretch it a little you may even argue that it was actually invented 7 years before that. I'll agree that for the most part technological advances in 2D animation remained stagnant for the majority of that 75 years, but I think that there was a rather marked advance when we get into the 1990's as computers began to enter the production workflow.

I've been working in the animation industry since 1995 and I've witnessed a lot of this progress. For a brief period of time it looked as if computers were going to mitigate outsourcing to overseas studios. I'm working now for a company (Animation Collective) that, when I first started here, had every intention to keep all its work in-house, being that it is a Flash-based studio. As time has gone on the producers have been unable to avoid sending work to Canada and to India.

To me, Anime Studio Pro represents a huge leap forward technologically. I believe that it has the potential to return Animation work to an in-house status based on the fact that fewer animators are needed to produce even higher quality animation than was previously available, at a faster pace than it is currently produced. I look to studios like Greykid and all their work, both short and long form, as an inspiration and as a manifestation of this theory.

Additionally, as fantastic as all those Disney classics are, the company itself couldn't escape its own limitations over the years. Disney Studios had a driving force behind it that waned when Walt died and over the years (and not without exception) both the story and graphic style has become rather stale, resulting in lower box office returns.

Animation as defined by Disney was somewhat hemmed in by the limitations of the technology of the time. All animation had to have a thin black border around a flat color, had to have thousands of color adjustments to compensate for layer upon layer of cels, had to have a staff of hundreds of temporary employees creating thousands and thousands and thousands of ON-MODEL drawings over 2 to 3 years.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of Disney and even some non-Disney movies that look the same even when they obviously changed designers? How come none of the movies break away from that kind of style? A lot of that has to do with marketability (or the perception of what is marketable) but some of it also has to do with the limitation of the technology they were using. An example of a slight stylistic breakaway for Disney are the Xerox movies, but still, if you change the texture of the line back to their previous style, you might not notice the difference.

When computers entered the industry in the 90's, it was the first time that I saw a different look to animation, even the animation I saw on television. I thought how wonderful it would be to finally see some of the great illustrators of our time finally get their work in motion and I anticipated what a visual feast that would be. The movies never picked up that ball but television certainly did. That represented a huge advancement in 2D animation that I don't think you can gloss over all that easily.

I think there's plenty of area for Anime Studio to be developed. I think that if you simply look in the 'Scripting' section of this forum you can easily see many areas for development. What comes to my mind immediately is the 'boneposes' script, which unfortunately is stalled in its development. As I understand it, the scripting feature of AS was added for the purpose of developing new features that Mike himself couldn't anticipate. I think it would be great to have some of the people developing these tools compensated by SM as the features are officially added to AS. I mean, it would be nice to not have to hunt through my folder of scripts to find the exact one that's needed to accomplish something, or to be able to hand a AS project over to a colleague without also having to include the script that makes it all work for him/her.

AS is certainly a fantastic tool. Not many other tools can eliminate the need for having people to tween character animation and certainly not many other tools that can tween character animation are as easy to use. I'm thankful to have found it and to have purchased a copy of it. As fantastic as it is, there's still room to grow.

[jahnocli]

As fantastic as it is, there's still room to grow.

There's *always* room to grow. Software is like a shark -- if it doesn't keep moving forward, it dies. Flash now has bones -- still inferior to AS, but for how long? Re-usability of assets is already better in Flash. Smith Micro (or whoever the hell IS in charge of development now) need to wake up. If they care -- we've seen precious little evidence of that...

[mkelley]

I don't disagree there's room for improvement (although as I said I don't think it will happen and no one should hold their breath) but I disagree with almost everything slice said.

Either he misses my point due to my inability to present it properly, or chooses to on purpose. I just watched Sleeping Beauty on BD and it looked as though it had been done today. Point is that there ain't much new happening in 2D and it never can (that's just inherent).

Indeed, someone posted some links here to some very very old animation (in the teens) and some of THAT stuff looked as current as anything you can see today.

Whatever changes can be SEEN are due directly to the incorporation of 3D elements into 2D, not to any change in 2D animation. That isn't to say that software tools or techniques to achieve this haven't changed, just that what you can do with AS is timeless -- it is and there is no way anyone can dispute that.

But I'll stop responding, as it's kind of pointless anyway. Mike ain't gonna do more, I can promise that (I have resisted stating this categorically because first of all I am no authority, and second I hate to squash people's hopes, but I would bet anyone here a dollar this is the truth). No matter how much we want it anything else we get in the future will be a real unexpected treat.

[synthsin75]

Mmm, somehow my name got into that quote Slice posted. I'm not in that debate.

Mike (mkelley), do you know something I don't. You sound pretty sure about the end of AS developement.

If Mike Clifton has given up on AS developement (though I assume he still maintains this forum, though he has turned over more of that responsibility to Vern), I'd like to know how much it would take to buy out AS. I'm sure *someone* would be happy to develope it. Even if it ends up open source.

Though I really keep expecting MC to eventually post a reasuring message.

But this is all probably just a bunch of rumor-mongering.

[PARKER]

Yes, anime studio is great!!

[Christopher90]

Yes, this app is really amazing.

[realsnake]

I'm only going to say this that the one and only software i ever respected is Anime Studio