Toon boom Vs Flash

After learning all my animation techniques with Adobe Flash, I find it very difficult to learn and use Toon Boom Studio. Toon Boom just does everything differently. It is a very powerful program, but after learning flash, and having to basically forget what I had learned, instantly made me dislike this program. Ok, so I’ve been using Adobe/Macromedia programs for a good four or five years and always liked them, so I could come across being biased. But personally, I just plain don’t like Toon Boom. I know other people do, and I know the sorts of animations that can be produced with it, but, i just can’t use it well.

Flash:

Pros;
Very powerful software.
Can build interactive programs with it.
Industry standard for 2D animation.
Can be integrated with Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Fireworks.

Cons;
Very Expensive.
Hard to learn at first.

Toon Boom;

Pros;
Easy to jump into the basics.
Built in storyboard software.
Built in exposure sheet software.
Automatically performs lip-syncing.

Cons;
Incredibly high cost.
Can be a bit too advanced at times.
Not industry standard for 2D.

Overall;

Personally, I prefer Flash. Purely on the basis that i cannot use Toon Boom and find it difficult to learn.

EPIC SLICE-OF-LIFE

Epic slice-of-life is a story about 2 characters, a withdrawn secret agent named Isaac, and an overworked martial artist called Raiden.

In the past, Isaac was a very successful agent, he worked with MI6 and one handed stopped a huge terrorist threat in Belgium, Stopped a dozen nuclear missiles being launched in south Wales, and traced the explosives back to a small arms factory in Wolverhampton.

Unfortunately, he was injured in the late 90’s, and since the he has had a desk job with the local police. He tried to solve cases alone, but always failed. Now, he is back, but one problem persists, due to the amount of failures, he is too shy to investigate any cases any more.

Raiden, a martial artist, gets paid work as a stunt double in movies and a body guard. The only problem is he works 48 hours a day, far too much for one man. He is very secretive about his life, so not much is known about him.

The story will follow both of the characters as they meet and gain each other’s trust. Buts secretly, each character is out for his own gain. Raiden constantly tries to get Isaac to track suspects, so he doesn’t have to be a body guard, and Isaac is often trying to use Raiden as muscle so he can catch people.

This constantly goes on, until they are both in a car accident, during their time in a coma, the men have a dream, and in this dream, an epiphany. When they awake, it turns out they are one man, with a cured split personality syndrome.

Another Story Idea

Tommy, a small boy from south London is heading home from school. Its chucking down with rain, and he has no coat. The bullies took it away from him.

The story is going to revolve around Tommy, and how he grows, trains and eventually gets his own back on the bullies. He will begin life as a weedy little kid, and by the end of the story he will be a big, strong guy who now bullies the small kids.

Eventually the story will end with him realising how he has become one of the bullies and will change his life for good.

KA

Animation Term: Secondary Actions

A secondary action is an action that assists a primary action. For example, a walk sequence can be completed with just the character’s legs moving, but the arms swaying back and forwards assists the realism, so it is classed as a secondary action.

Animation Term: Exaggeration

Exaggeration is essentially a way of making movements and actions of characters more apparent to an audience. Animators often use techniques such as stretching certain areas of a character out of proportion when moving fast, or if a character is happy or sad, they will over compensate the style of the drawing to reflect this.

Animation Term: Arcs

Arcs are simply are more realistic way of portraying movement of an object. In reality, items rarely move in a perfect straight line, instead they tend to move in curves, called arcs. These arcs can be very obvious, or so slight they can’t be seen easily. The best way to explain is if you threw a ball in the air, it would take a smooth path up, and then get gradually lower, without any sharp angles. It is essentially the natural path something takes due to momentum and gravity

Story Idea

Ok, so an idea about a possible animation....

So, a guy gets up in the morning... Goes to bathroom, gets in shower, teeth done ect ect, gets dressed leaves the house.

Camera follows hime down street so on and so forth until the end of the day when he goes to sleepy times.

Ok, so basically, the idea is to follow a character for a day to se his life style.

Iff im going to use this idea, ill need to take a couple of photos so i can draw a few of the scenes i got in my head.

Also, i re-did the logo a little bit, the Kalive bit is a bit wider now. Unless i am posting a bit of graphics or image from the animation, it will be in every post from now on.

KA