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Toon Boom User Story Animating Beyond the Web with Animate Pro

Animate Pro.. How can such a serious beast be so much fun? I'm finding it's as addictive as any game, so for me the only difficult part is getting to bed at a reasonable hour. With my background in traditional pencil & paper animation, the appeal of Animate Pro lies not only in the comfort of the traditional tools but also in the time-saving aspects of the UI and the brutal power of the camera, 3D elements and vast library of effects modules. When the results speak so clearly, the choice isn't a difficult one

Name:  Adam Philips Company:  Brackenwood Entertainment Occupation:  Storytelling, Illustration, Animation Location:  Sydney, Australia Website:  www.bitey.com Biography:  From 1993 to 2004, Adam Phillips worked at Walt Disney Animation Australia, as an Inbetweener, Animator, Effects Animator and Effects Director. In 2004, he became Director at Brackenwood Entertainment, which on one hand, develops online series of 2D animated shorts titled Brackenwood and on the other, runs Bitey Castle, a website showcasing personal work including stories, artwork and animated shorts. Adam is also doing freelance contracts in Design – characters, effects, layout, backgrounds; Storyboarding; Character animation; Effects animation; Articles and tutorials for print and online; as well as Music videos.

How long have you been in this profession?

My first job in animation was a traineeship with Disney back in 1993. I have been working in animation ever since, but resigned from Disney in 2004 to pursue my goals.

What are your most important accomplishments?

• 3 years FX director at Walt Disney Animation Australia
• Writing and contributing to several books on animation and Flash animation
• Writing, directing and animating an official music video for Ween
• 5 Flash Forward awards over 4 years for best Flash animation
• Various film festival nominations and wins
• Developing an online animated series and attracting a large fan base

History with the Toon Boom Animate Pro

Do you create your animations using Toon Boom Animate Pro only?

I’ve only recently begun to use Toon Boom Animate Pro because I feel my animated series is outgrowing the limitations of the internet. On each project I do like to stay within just one authoring environment, so now that I’m comfortable with Animate Pro, I’ll be using that software alone for future projects, perhaps with the exception of any possible 3D elements or scripted elements, such as swarm/school/flock animation.

If not, what other applications are you using?

At this stage I use none of the following in conjunction with Animate Pro. I call on various 2D paint, sketch, design and animation packages depending on the demands of each project. I’ve been using Adobe Flash since late 1999. The majority of my work is 2D but I occasionally incorporate 3D, using packages such as Maya, Lightwave and Cinema 4D.

Why did you choose to combine these products?

I use Adobe Flash for all of the animation on my website, as well as any freelance web animation I’m contracted to do, but for all broadcast work (TV, DVD, film) I’m now using Toon Boom Animate Pro wherever possible.

Please describe your workflow

My workflow is paperless so the first step for me is storyboarding. Storyboard Pro is brilliant and is now the first program I open when starting most new animation projects. For my personal animated works I generally combine the writing process with storyboarding, as I find it quite natural to write a story as a sequence of images.

From there, I create rough background and character layouts in each scene, before cleaning up the backgrounds and keying in the character/effects movement. After that, cleaning up and inbetweening characters and effects, followed by painting with colour.

My workflow is fairly organic and changes depending on how I feel it’s best to deal with the current task. Occasionally I’ll complete a scene of character animation before the background is complete, or vice-versa. While it’s very liberating to work this way, I am very schedule-oriented and focused on the end product. I developed a lot of good habits from working in a high pressure animation studio for 12 years, especially with time management.

What kind of animation do you create?

With my experience in traditional 2D animation, my entire body of personal work consists of Flash shorts online and some projects for television and video.

What are your top five favorite features in Toon Boom Animate Pro:

Things about ToonBoom that draw me away from Flash CS3

• The network view is so comfortable, it’s scary. Something that looks so daunting to a beginner is deceptively easy to use. Can’t live without it now!
• The Effect Modules AND the potential to customise/create new modules through scripting and the SDK (even though I know very little about programming).
• Colour and Palettes systems - they’re intuitive and easy to use
• 3D workspace and camera (of course!)
• Zooming timeline, pegs and function editors
• Custom pens and resize shortcuts

What Toon Boom Animate Pro and (other application) features allow you to distinguish your animation productions?

Several years of my animation experience lie in Effects animation, so Toon Boom Animate Pro is packed with modules – and further possibilities – that are exciting to me. The further ability to create my own modules with the Toon Boom SDK blows my mind (even though I don’t know how to do it yet).

Did you experience any productivity gains in using Toon Boom Animate Pro?

I cleared a week from my schedule and dedicated the entire time to learning Animate Pro. During that time I learned not only how to translate my existing workflow to Toon Boom Animate Pro, but also discovered many powerful new ways of doing things that I couldn’t do it with other software.

Are you more efficient today compared to your production toolset used previously?

As mentioned previously, I came up to speed very quickly with Toon Boom Animate Pro. Learning in a production environment was a big help. I hit the ground running and it forced me to learn the essentials right away.

watch Bad Drawing

Which task/operations was/were challenging to do in your previous process?

My previous process was 80% web based, so I was extremely limited when it came to the other 20% (TV, DVD, film projects), especially with things like camera techniques, lighting and animated effects.

Is it possible to get the same results with other digital animation software?

With Animate Pro’s unique features, it’s capable of so much that cannot be done as easily (or at all) in other software I’ve used.

How do you feel about Toon Boom Animate Pro?

After just a few weeks, I’m already feeling very comfortable in the Animate Pro workspace. I have already made plans to create my next major project entirely in Animate Pro.

How was your learning curve? Have you used the video tutorials?

My learning curve was very steep, as I was introduced to Animate Pro as part of work on a new freelance assignment so I had to come up to speed quickly. Along with the Animate Pro forum and email technical support, the video tutorials were essential in helping me learn fast.

Equipment used

I would like to get a Cintiq eventually, but for now I use a Wacom 9x12 Intuos 3, with a single 19” LCD monitor and Dual Core AMD Opteron Processor 275, 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, WinXP Pro SP2.. USB Wacom tablet connected.

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