Animation Software for Cartooning....

**rpc9943** · 04 November 2006, 04:24 AM

freaking xara dev > MERGE WITH ANIME STUDIO plssss

RonC

**The Alien** · 04 November 2006, 08:15 AM

I agree with Logo Kid. Xara wouldn't have much of a niche in the animation market if they came with a custom animation format. Xara wouldn't stand a chance.

So, if they would add an animation feature, it'd be the best thing if one could only export to .swf cause there's already so much support for that format. Even then, keep in mind that Xara artwork is a heck of a lot "heavier" than Flash. Think of the fps you'd get for animating that in flash format

Not to forget the filesize.

**Squeaky** · 04 November 2006, 05:15 PM

My request would be that Xara concentrate on improving Xtreme (ASAP please!)
Though I'm sure they could come up with a fantastic animation app it would take quite a bit of time that could be better used on the software we all know and love.

Moho (now Anime Studio) is a fantastic app for animation. E-Frontier have taken over the marketing leaving the developer free to do more er, developing so good news all round. It, like any other app takes a bit of time to get the hang of but time spent with it is not wasted!

In my dream world AS and Extreme would both advance at speed and take over the cgi world in a pincer movement leaving users wondering why they paid so much for so little. sigh!

**pauland** · 04 November 2006, 09:11 PM

Nice work on your website, Squeaky.

**Squeaky** · 05 November 2006, 04:59 PM

Very kind of you!
Most of it done with Xara, moho with a little flash and Mirage.

**rpc9943** · 08 November 2006, 07:36 PM

squeaky, any recommendations on using xara with moho? like exactly how you do your workflow... appreciated

(i still have moho demo

)

RonC

**Squeaky** · 08 November 2006, 08:08 PM

Mostly I work out all my colours and designs in Xara. I then trace the character In Moho. I find point placement critical for characters and that is the best way to do it. You can import ai files exported from Xara but they usually need a little clean up. For Backgrounds PNG's with alphas do the trick nicely!
PNG's of my designs can be imported as palettes in moho too.

**rpc9943** · 09 November 2006, 03:25 AM

so you literally learned moho's drawing tools? :P

explain critical placement.. youre still being vague

RonC

**Squeaky** · 09 November 2006, 09:45 PM

Yup. The drawing tools are a little different tp pretty much everything else due to the animated nature of moho. Spline handles would be all over the place in frame by frame stuff. (As I understand it). Once you get the hang of them they are pretty quick. Just click and drag, click and drag and then go back in and adjust the curvature.

I'm not talking about the pencil tool though. I don't really use that much.

As to the point placement. An example is if you drew an arm and put bones in it and then tried to bend it. You can get a better result by carefully placing the points to get a good deformation. The fewer the better - just like trying to get nice curves in Xara. 3D modeling is another example -you can get nicer deformations by careful placement of edge loops.

**gbpatriot** · 10 November 2006, 08:51 AM

Whether you choose TOONBOOM, Anime Studio or Flash ( I prefer Flash all the way) check out this brilliant site for pre-rigged figures and animation tutorials.

http://www.cartoonsolutions.com/

After seeing what these guys do you might be inspired to begin creating your pre-rigged figures in Xara X - I was! Drawing your figures in Xara is much quicker and easier than in any of these packages.

Ray

'Be Alert - the world needs more Lerts'