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Refering to the last TVP-newsletter in which TVP announced their collaboration with CA what do you think about CelAction - and maybe you've already some experience with that animation app.

By now I understand that one side is master of pixel-created animations the other one comes in with vectors and kinematics. Whither goest thou ?

Anyway at first glance it looked to me as a half-as-good Anime Studio (from which I know several members are keen users here).
So I am curious what do you think ?

I have animated with celaction around 2004　(so I don't know what is he software now) and it has nothing in common with Tvpaint.
As much as I know it is a slow and difficult to use and animate 2D articulated puppet-like animation software.
And if I had to do puppet-like animation I would use flash.

seems pretty impressive from their website.

Well, for all stuff in cutout style I use Anime Studio. Fast, reliable, and a bargain compared to the prices of Celaction.

i cant seem to download a demo.

Yes, it's very vague in that respect - I get suspicious when a company can't name prices for their products.

Their smallest package starts at 800.- $ — compare to AS' 199.- $ for the Pro edition.

"The pricing of CelAction2D depends on the number of seats you are purchasing, how much individual modification is required and whether training and on-site technical support are required. It is also possible to rent the software for the duration of a production."

Professional Edition:
"This is purchased as a perpetual licence, with a yearly upgrade fee to get the latest version of the software and support."

Studio Edition:
"This is for rental only, so you only pay for what you use. This gives you the most flexible pricing plan on the market, allowing you to scale up and down at your convenience, and our generous terms mean you don't get caught out in emergencies."

I know that scheme, Softimage and Toonz had a similar one: if you don't pay year after year, the whole software simply expires.

Yes I brought up the addition of symbols, which led to a very heated debate about making TVP "too much like flash" and "a useless toy"..
And "we already have this, with the use of the animbrush / keyframer".

However a bones type system for a truly dynamic "super-animbrush" system in TVP 10, would be truly mind blowing, and a total boon for this type of cutout animation.
CelAction would even be in trouble..

Yes, Bone-System and Kinematics would be very welcome. Notice also that Anime Studio has Bone Dynamics simulating physics ( a little basic comparing it with 3D)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeqZ4uatkGs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I use Anime Studio also, although I don't have a lot of call for vector work, but I can't imagine it being beat for the price by any tool.

I'm not that kean on the vector look either.

Deleted by user who re-read his post and considered it poorly formulated. I apologize for writing something I hadn't meant to say and never re-read what I did say until now.

I prefer also a more personal style which comes rather with drawing lines per frame.

As seen in this link from Ben's recent post (thanks for that !!!) which is interesting from the technical side the goal for cutout has to come much more from storytelling and from breaking the conventional visual rules.

But I also experienced that the rigging process in Anime Studio is really fast - all in all faster than drawing frame by frame. Although faster means not getting better results.

Ben: Anime Studio handles big bitmaps as well as Quicktime files remarkably well. Have a look at my website http://www.enigmation.de to see some examples of that. I did several scenes in HDTV (1920 x 1080) which used multiple bitmaps in the range of 6000 x 6000 px without any problem, delay, or glitch. That's why I recommend AS that much as a helper program to TVP.

The combination of bitmaps with bones makes it unbeatable in cutout style animation. The only feature I miss is batch import of bitmaps, which makes work a bit tedious when building characters from a big number of peaces.

Slowtiger: Great stuff, I'll give it a go.

@slowtiger: Don't you know the script to export Photoshop Layers directly to an Anime Studio document? I made my animated easter greeting using that script. I built the characters in Photoshop, rigging and animation was done in Anime Studio Pro.

Take a look at my animated easter greeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywzHPQMXRJo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I made it in Full HD and had no trouble causing in bitmap- or filesizes. There where other bugs I had to handle