Flipbook animation in AnimeStudio

[MaxHammond]

I love Anime Studio but one of the features that I always felt it was missing was the ability to do flipbook style animations.

i.e. "get out a Wacom and old school it! frame by frame"

I was looking on the net and found this cool little app Digicel FlipBook http://www.flipbookpro.com/flipbook.htm

I am thinking of buying it and then using it to produce the animation then importing an avi with an alpha so i can use it inside AnimeStudio.

does anyone have any idea if that will work? or has anyone tried importing an AVI with an Alpha? can you import an Image sequence?

I will try this weekend and update here.

[jahnocli]

You have to pay nearly $300 to get more than 2 layers and 300 frames... I'm sure there are cheaper options out there that can do what you want.

[MaxHammond]

I was gona get the lite version, you wouldn't need to use layers, because I would export each character to Anime Studio separately.

ie just use Flipbook for the animation and anime studio for camera, layers, effects and composting?

[Mikdog]

Ah. I had the same issue with AS so I checked out ToonBoom Animate Pro. It can do compositing and effects and camera and frame-by-frame all in one package.

Why not try Pencil? Its a free app as far as I know.

With your method if you wanted to add a new animation or change something it'd mean re-rendering out of FlipBook and re-importing into AS.

However, no reason you can't use this method and maybe it'll work really well for you. My guess is that sooner or later you'll want to do everything in one package and then try out something like Toon Boom.

[Mohlar]

try Pencil? Its a free app as far as I know.

Pencil is one of those apps (and yes, it's free) which crops up a lot and yet never seems to attract a great deal of praise. It's still work-in-progress and many users have reported bugs or a tendency to freeze or crash. It's OK but never quite seems to match expectations of what would seem to be a traditional cel-type animation program. However, there are a few examples and tutorials on Youtube.

As for Flipbook - the previous comment is right - you have to shell out a LOT of money to get a usable package. The same goes for PAP (Plastic Animation Paper) which, to my eyes, seems a much more versatile and intuitive program. Having said that, I tried it but decided not to buy it, so maybe I didn't give it a detailed enough test.

It would be really interesting if someone tried to compile a hierarchical list of different types of animation software out there, to include freeware (eg: Pencil, Monkeyjam, Alice, Creatoon, Synfig); freeware with shareware options for access to specific features (eg: Artoonix, Moviestorm, DAZ 3D) etc. up to more professional and studio-level programs such as Anime Studio, ToonBoom etc.

[GardenGuy]

The new Nintendo DS handheld - the DSi lets you download programs and apps.

I've been using the Flipnote Studio program to do flipnotes. It's a free to download program but has two layers and a lot of small features. You can save your animations as an animated Gif or save them frame by frame in a sequence file to import into Anime Studio

So if you have a DSi the program is free.

Goto flipnote.hatena.com to see animations that people from around the world have created and go to the news page to see the best for that week's theme.

[wizaerd]

Necro much?

[AmigaMan]

Plastic Animation Paper 4 has been free for quite a while I believe...
http://plasticanimationpaper.dk/

Anime Studio is NOT meant for frame by frame. That is the whole point of it. It was developed purely so that people didn't have to do a tedious amount of drawing. You can do it but you are better off just getting any one of the number of software options available that have been developed to do frame by frame animation if that's all you want to do.
You could look at PD Pro also...
http://www.thebest3d.com/howler/the-dog ... -list.html

[Dust]

I must agree with Amiga Man on PD Howler.
I actually do not use Howler, but bought PD Artist, which is Howler minus the animation features. (Since I have Anime, I don't need that)
PD Howler does however do an excellent job of animation.
Both Artist and Howler are a good addition to Anime Studio, and are beautiful artprograms. (Great for backgrounds, and animated alpha in Anime Studio)
The older versions cost next to nothing.

[GCharb]

Yes, pencil 2D is pretty simple and open source, you can find it here!

http://www.pencil-animation.org/

[AmigaMan]

Pencil would be excellent but the couple of times I've tried it it's crashed within minutes. It could just be something peculiar to my system of course.

[zmcmay]

The flipbook animation can simulate the book page flipping effect of a realistic paper book. I have made an ebook with cirtual page flipping animation by using this tool: http://www.kvisoft.com/flipbook-maker/

[Furpuss]

I love Anime Studio but one of the features that I always felt it was missing was the ability to do flipbook style animations.

i.e. "get out a Wacom and old school it! frame by frame"

I was looking on the net and found this cool little app Digicel FlipBook http://www.flipbookpro.com/flipbook.htm

I am thinking of buying it and then using it to produce the animation then importing an avi with an alpha so i can use it inside AnimeStudio.

does anyone have any idea if that will work? or has anyone tried importing an AVI with an Alpha? can you import an Image sequence?

I will try this weekend and update here.

Flipbook was designed for pencil & paper animators. I no longer use it as there is/was a much better app called Toki, ($100.) which unfortunately just went out of business. I recently did a short project where I drew the animation on paper first, shot it on video a with Toki, and imported into AS and worked over it with shape animation and no bones. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwXHnTMfZtk

Furpuss