Various stuff made with TVPaint

[D.T. Nethery]

I think this advertising film was made with TVPaint (the animators who did this have several pieces on their website , including their Gobelins graduation film, made with TVPaint) . Trying to get confirmation that this was made with TVPaint . Anyone know for sure ?


http://vimeo.com/50834962" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(*Note: Vimeo embedded video don't seem to be working very well lately ... something has changed with how Vimeo interacts with the phBB forum software I think ? Or maybe it's just Firefox . The embedded video from Vimeo seems to work ok in Safari for me , but not with Firefox . Is anyone else experiencing this ?)

[idragosani]

(*Note: Vimeo embedded video don't seem to be working very well lately ... something has changed with how Vimeo interacts with the phBB forum software I think ? Or maybe it's just Firefox . The embedded video from Vimeo seems to work ok in Safari for me , but not with Firefox . Is anyone else experiencing this ?)

It's working in both Firefox and Google Chrome here.

[Elodie]

Hi David,

I already knew the video, but I don't know if they used TVPaint on it
Hope you'll have a positive answer !

[D.T. Nethery]

http://vimeo.com/54171858" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Elodie]

Woaah... Ryan Woodward's first animation made on TVPaint.

656201107.gif (19.29 KiB) Viewed 25030 times

[Elodie]

By Paul and Sandra Fierlinger :

[Paul Fierlinger]

Thanks, Elodie for teaching me how to make the YouTube clip show up here.

“PLAYTIME” is a 20 minute collection of classical children’s songs Sandra and I made for the Children’s Book of the Month Club in 1999 and which I thought we had long tossed out. But just today, Sandra happened to come upon this old DVD, our first ever, inside an old box of junk and we would like to now share our early work with others, since it documents a part of the beginnings of TVPaint creations. The pencil on paper drawings were scanned with the very first Sony Camcorder into our first PC (after having abandoned our Amiga 3000) and utilizing a number of software.

At first we used AXA, which was a cumbersome, in-house piece of animation software, specifically made for the production of Jasper the Friendly Ghost, made in India. Then we switched to the much further advanced Crater Software, developed in Spain, after receiving their junk mail in the post, and finally we stayed with Aura-TVPaint after someone at the Ottawa Animation Festival told us that “D-Paint was now on the PC” and gave us a link to NewTek’s website.

This progression happened very fast, within the first part of 1999, after which all the coloring and background painting was done by Sandra in Aura. The last couple of songs actually show my first experiments with paperless animation (Teapot, for instance). All software used in the making of this film is listed in the end credits.

[slowtiger]

Wow, I remember AXA being on my list in the 90's as well. And there was this "Animation Stand" software, but they all looked much too limited to me, so I just abused Director for some animation.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Well, I actually left out the Amiga Disney software, which was our very first attempt into going digital -- but much too primitive for our needs even back then. AXA was a monster and should never have been offered to the public -- for $2,000 no less and we had to buy two of them!! Crater cost almost $4,000 and we had to buy two of those as well. Aura I think went for some $ 300 or maybe more, but what's a few hundred dollars next to the initial $ 12,000 outlay to get us going -- but we were that eager to escape the 19th century.

The man who developed AXA soon left the company and started his own low end software, Flip Book, with which he did much better and I believe he is still at it because you can see him coding new features on his laptop at airports after Film Fests have closed. Animation Stand we used as well because neither of the earlier software was any good at camera moves and for sound editing on the Amiga we used the Canadian Show-time -- which boasted an unheard of two tracks to work with. No other sound software at the time had the ability to mix two tracks together; on any platform -- the Amiga was that advanced.

But I am talking about a span of just months here -- digital technology made huge leaps and bounds in new developments almost daily; the onslaught of ideas can be safely described as an explosion, looking back now.

[Soom]

Paul, the animation is beautiful, thanks.
I did work a lot on CTP (Crater Sowftware) and back then, even in 2005, for me it was the best and easiest software for classical animation that I could ever find. We've used Toonz in our studio, but it was terribly cumbersome, that we needed a special man for it - the Toonzer. Also they had Animo, but it looked awkward then too. CTP was really a lifesaver, I could easily work at home with it and it had all it takes - XSheet, scanner integration, layers, cameras, 2 sound tracks, etc. Those camera layers allowed a lot of freedom in reusing frames, as if I was doing symbol-cut-outs animation (like in Flash). I still miss some of the features of CTP in other software, including TVPaint, but CTP isn't available for MAC I think , so I had to drop it for good... But as far as I remember, the price of the full pack was only 1300$, not 4000$ ??

[Paul Fierlinger]

The price went down eventually because many people complained and Crater wasn't selling at all. Crater was a typical case of a single developer (and a part time one to boot) Sebastian ... hmmm... I forgot his last name. Then followed a chain of middle men/resellers/producers that reached all the way from Spain to Canada and they all had their hands in the pot. I was in touch with Sebastian back then; always on the phone asking him for improvements and new features and he always explained that the producers aren't paying him enough. So I called the sales person in Canada, begging him to lower the price so they could sell more products and have more money to pay Sebastian, which eventually happened and Crater 2 came out, but by then I was a beta tester on Aura. Actually TVPaint's x-sheet is a lot like Crater's

[Soom]

The price went down eventually because many people complained and Crater wasn't selling at all. Crater was a typical case of a single developer (and a part time one to boot) Sebastian ... hmmm... I forgot his last name. Then followed a chain of middle men/resellers/producers that reached all the way from Spain to Canada and they all had their hands in the pot. I was in touch with Sebastian back then; always on the phone asking him for improvements and new features and he always explained that the producers aren't paying him enough. So I called the sales person in Canada, begging him to lower the price so they could sell more products and have more money to pay Sebastian, which eventually happened and Crater 2 came out, but by then I was a beta tester on Aura. Actually TVPaint's x-sheet is a lot like Crater's

Hmm - I didn't know all those shady details. I've been working with v1.8, but never saw any updates for a very long time, so I just quit using it at some point, especially when I switched to MAC. Now I see there is v3 already, bus still no MAC version (Parallels is an option though), but I'm already a TVPaint user, so I might not need CTP in most cases anyway...
XSheet? Hmm - I'm still on 9.5, and I don't see the TVP XSheet as good as in CTP - did that change in 10?

[Paul Fierlinger]

I've never used TVP's x-sheet because I find it unnecessary for paperless animation. But as far as I've noticed it also has the left side/right side system of keeping original drawings separate from instances. What's advanced a lot in TVP-10 (and seemingly under-recognized by most users) is the new Tracker system for automated coloring instancing. Now Sandra doesn't even have to be given advanced notice which one of my frames are reused later along the timeline; once she paints a frame and comes upon it later, it will already be painted.

I just gave Crater a look -- I had no idea they are still in business- and I see it is now German owned, which explains why the price has come down to a realistic level. But I don't see that it has improved in the paperless department. Crater still seems to be a very much draw-on-paper-and-scan-in application, which it always was very good at.

[Fabrice]

- I'm still on 9.5, and I don't see the TVP XSheet as good as in CTP - did that change in 10?

XSheet layers timing (instances + exposure) can now be adjusted directly in the timeline view. (not possible in 9.5)
a few bugs have been fixed too.

Also, the instances using the same name in the timeline can now have exactly the same image thanks to a new option in the Animator Panel.
Useful for LipSync.

[Elodie]

Made with TVPaint at "Chez Eddy", a French studio.