I've been working as a Tech at a Flash company for 7 years. Yeah, we've been checking out Toon Boom constantly since it's pretty much the only remaining competitor to Adobe Flash.Toon Boom Animations wrote: Hi DaFool
We are trying to get more in touch with our users and get more active in niche industry forums. Out of curiosity how long have you been in the industry and what are some of the challenges that you see on a daily basis?
Anything you like to see from animation software that you don't see these days ?
The biggest issue is simply lack of application in comparison to 3D. 3D is what gets on the big screen... 3D is what's needed for a company to have work making commercials or special effects, and 3D is more easily integrated in video games. But 2D just has that charm and personality, and given a skilled animator, even using Flash it won't feel like cutout animation. But anyways, enough rambling.
I am curious also as to how you found this site. To me, animation is still the epitome of the creative medium. But before a property has enough resources and popularity to make animation, it has to exist at least as comics... and it turns out people who don't have the resources (i.e. time) to make comics are now turning to visual novels (less drawings in general, and in turn each drawing can be in color and with more detailed shading). This is also accelerated by the fact that print media is dying and the digital future is offering what we call "motion comics" which effectively sits right in the middle between a traditional visual novel and an animation.
So far most motion comics I've seen have been prerendered as video cutscenes in After Effects, but it is thoroughly feasible (theoretically) to take a tool such as Flash or ToonBoom and animate a few frames to insert into an engine such as Ren'Py (which with the latest version should just be capable enough to be an engine for simple motion comics). In fact I bought Animate recently when it was on sale to try for this very purpose.