~ Animator Questions ~

[Cassafrass 249]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place... I hope not. Didn't know where to put it, and I was getting desperate for an answer to my questions. ^^;

 

What do y'all use for your MLP animations? I wanna get started with some of my own, but don't have any money to buy an actual program like Flash sadly... so I am gonna try this out: http://vectorian.com/giotto/

 

If this works for you guys, I have one more question for now - is there any way to use these puppets with this? I sure hope so... as I need to be able too: http://www.deviantart.com/art/MLP-Flash-Puppets-collection-UPDATE-12-4-2014-371440821

 

Thanks everypony... I will probably have more questions soon. XD

[Surface 115]

I don't really animate much (no MLP), but I like [a href=http://www.synfig.org/]Synfig[/a]. I think I might use it to make a real thing some time.

[Osmiumburst 15]

You could try out blender, or maya student edition. Both of which are free, Blender has lots of tutorials on line on how to use it.

[Guest]

I've just started learning Synfig.

It looks very complete, it has a pretty good graphical editor, and it's free and open source.

 

Now to learn how to use it...

At least I managed to do something, unlike with my Flash trial where nothing was ever accomplished...

 

EDIT : As for Giotto, it looks based off Flash, so I guess that puppet collection should work with it.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Guest

[SasQ 1,379]

So far I create SVG vectors in Inkscape, then prepare different poses and export the frames as PNG bitmaps. Then I import these bitmaps in GIMP and combine into GIF animation there. For simple GIF animations this is suffices. But if one wants to make something more lengthy and professional, better tools are needed.

 

Someone mentioned SynFig Studio already. It is a good free and open-source alternative for Adobe Flash (still not perfect, though). Unfortunately it cannot open Flash projects, so I cannot use those ready-made pony puppets other people made. It can only import SVG vectors. But there's no easy way to export SVG from Flash (Adobe made it purposely, to create a closed cage for their users).

 

Once I started writing a Ruby script which reads FLA files and exports vector data found in there. It kind of works already for simple vector elements, but it's still a work-in-progress. I need to implement gradients support and find some way to fix the edges, because current algorithm is not perfect and it leaves some thin slits between areas of color. Currently I'm on hold with this, since there weren't much interest in this project. But if more people would be interested in it, maybe I'll return to developing it further one day...

[Cassafrass 249]

Thanks so much for the advice and links guys! I've already checked some of those out... they look cool! I wish I could afford flash though. :/ Oh well. Anyways, I guess for now I will be trying to figure out how to use those. One question, though - can I upload my animations from Synfig to Youtube? Thanks!

[SasQ 1,379]

I don't think you can do it directly even from Adobe Flash.

But in Synfig (as well as in Flash) you can render animation and export it as video file, which in turn you can upload on YouTube as any other video format accepted by YouTube.

It seems to be possible, since the creator or this video had to upload it somehow:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfznCLjIEWM

 

 

(Open it in YouTube. In the description there's an information that he used Synfig for animating this.)

Edited May 16, 2014 by SasQ

[Cassafrass 249]

Hm, interesting... well, thanks so much! I will definitely check out those programs, haha.