The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Does anyone know anything about animation software?

Dre? You have dabbled with this stuff haven't you. Sausage Boy?

When we were in NY last month - we went to the Children's Museum of the Arts, where this dude animated my daughter's drawing, which was pretty cool. He got her to do a little bit of drawing, then photographed it - and it ended up as a cool little cartoon. (She drew a picture of her trip to NY, which involved a picture of Mt Taranaki back home - in full eruption with lava flying everywhere - and a plane flying away from it over to a little island covered in big buildings).

Anyway - I asked him what software he used, but now I've forgotten. It was on a Mac, and it was called "i-something".

Anyone know what it might have been? Or suggest anything I might be able to do something similar with on a Mac? I want something very, very, very simple. Strictly beginner level. I'm thinking that when I finally finish the album I am working on it would be cool to put a few things on UTube accompanied by dumb little cartons.

I'd like to know too, John. For the same reasons. I've always wanted to do an animated music vid.

the website Fluffy linked to somewhere here was awesome:

http://sketchfu.com/

it animates drawings - but I don't know if the animations are useable elsewhere at all

Neato, I haz a drawing. Click the pic.

I put little animation bits in my videos. I make my animations using outdated programs. I use a graphic program (PaintShopPro v.6 - which is about 7yrs old),
I use stop motion technigues. I make an image and save. Then I make alterations to the frame and save each change as a seperate image. Then I sequence them together as an animated scene. To sequence my frames together I use another old program (Magix Music Studio 2004). This program is meant for music production, but they threw in some video production tools that I use more than I every did for music production. What I like about the video production program is that it can be set to the BPM of your song and will sync the video effects to the BPM. This makes it easy to for me to to breakdown my animations into 4 and 8 bar chunks. I save small animations for different parts of my song and then when I have enough video clips for the whole song I put them in sequence with the music.

I don't know what you would use for an Apple, but I would suggest looking for a graphics editing program and A video program that will let you sequence images. I also went to my local public library and found some books on animation which were very useful. I also spent some time time studying cartoons on TV. If you watch a cartoon you begin to realize there are a lot more things not moving in a scene than are moving, so you don't have to have to much movement to create the illusion.

There's a whole mess of ways to do it, from the brute force and insanely time consuming (cel by cel using Photoshop's layers, then importing each cel into a Quicktime movie--with a "registered" version of Quicktime... the serials are out there, then dropping a soundtrack in the free version of ProTools), to the merely annoying (Illustrator's "Export layers to Flash") to the downright simple using applications made for it (Was Toon Boom one at one point? I wish I knew...).

In any case, I'd suggest starting here:

http://cmany.org/pages.php?pn=contact

I used to use flash for stuff like that. But for some reason everybody at songfight hates flash. (as far as I recall)

Reïst wrote:I used to use flash for stuff like that. But for some reason everybody at songfight hates flash. (as far as I recall)

I don't hate flash.
(I don't know what flash is)

Caravan Ray wrote:

Reïst wrote:I used to use flash for stuff like that. But for some reason everybody at songfight hates flash. (as far as I recall)

I don't hate flash.
(I don't know what flash is)

http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/

There's a free trial, which I used back in the day to learn it before I bought it. It takes some effort to figure out more complicated stuff, but if all you're looking for is tweening or frame by frame animation, flash can do it really easily.

Billy's Little Trip wrote:picture

How come the dude has a giant weiner hanging down before he walks past the hot chocolate chip cookie but it disappears in the next frame?

(I guess the other guy is mad because the cookie is so hot when he steps on it that he burns his foot?)

Rabid Garfunkel wrote: In any case, I'd suggest starting here:

http://cmany.org/pages.php?pn=contact

Ha! Genius!
Funny, I never even thought of that. Yes - I'll drop them an email.

BTW: This is exactly what I was talking about here:
http://cmany.org/pages.php?pn=medialab

Sadly the site doesn't seem to mention what they used to make this though

Eric Y. wrote:

Billy's Little Trip wrote:picture

How come the dude has a giant weiner hanging down before he walks past the hot chocolate chip cookie but it disappears in the next frame?

(I guess the other guy is mad because the cookie is so hot when he steps on it that he burns his foot?)

HaHa!!! Much better than my original idea.

Caravan Ray wrote:BTW: This is exactly what I was talking about here:
http://cmany.org/pages.php?pn=medialab

Sadly the site doesn't seem to mention what they used to make this though

That just looks like stop motion animation ... I used to do that with an old video camera back when I was in junior high. You just turn the camera on/off quick so you get 1 or 2 frames, then move the object and repeat the process. It's time consuming, but looks pretty cool.

If you're not worried about the subject being alive/physical, flash can do stuff like that. You can draw and move the stuff frame by frame, similar to stop motion animation.

Reïst wrote:

Caravan Ray wrote:BTW: This is exactly what I was talking about here:
http://cmany.org/pages.php?pn=medialab

Sadly the site doesn't seem to mention what they used to make this though

That just looks like stop motion animation ... I used to do that with an old video camera back when I was in junior high. You just turn the camera on/off quick so you get 1 or 2 frames, then move the object and repeat the process. It's time consuming, but looks pretty cool.

If you're not worried about the subject being alive/physical, flash can do stuff like that. You can draw and move the stuff frame by frame, similar to stop motion animation.

Yes - that's right. The dude just took still photos with the Mac's built in camera while my daughter was drawing - then ran it as a video. I will look into Flash

D'oh

...and now I think I remember the software the dude was using

iStopMotion......obviously

How cool is that?!? And my wife's camera is supported fully... how cool is that?!? Time to break out the tripod, find a power adapter, and grab the demo!

Someday.