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Having been involved in computers and animation since the late 1980's, I've had a chance to be witness to nearly every innovation regarding computer animation including those developed for the AtariST, the Amiga, the Mac and, of course, those Windows things. I'm sure you'll be able to follow where I'm going with the next bit.

Two-Dee was ruling the early marketplace and growing by leaps and bounds in the early 90's. Innovation was found primarily on the Amiga platform. Then, a strange obsession took the entire graphics community by storm - photo-realism. Realism in every possible form, including animation. I believe it is this obsession that has driven nearly all graphic product development through the 90's all the way till now.

But people have begun to realize they have eaten enough of this pie. Their stomachs are stuffed and their heads are reeling. "No more photo-realism, pleeeese!" This is why we are witnessing a resurgence of 2D art and animation, even among professional animators who make their living doing 3D.

So lets look at today's market and the objections that still remain to using a product like TVPaint. How many dedicated 2D animation packages exist, really, in the marketplace, today? I mean the one's that are trying to cater to new users as well as hardened, old school traditionalists. Products that are both affordable and functional. I can really only find 3, two of which are vector-based. The others I find are either greatly over-priced or not truly dedicated to the sole purpose of 2D animation. A fourth product is just an antiquated version of TVPaint, so I won't mention that one.

Now I wholeheartedly agree with the developers and ardent users of TVPaint - that pixels really are the thing to push, given their great flexibility and ability to mimic natural media and beyond. They are much more natural entities to deal with in nearly every way. They allow the real artist in each of us to come forth and present himself or herself. Far above and beyond anything else in the pixel-based marketplace, TVPaint has soared and continues to soar.

But, given all of this glory, people still have some ligitimate objections to transferring all of their available animation hours over to pixels and frame by frame animation, (at least in the area of character animation). The main objection, which stems from lack of experience and training, is the time it takes to produce production quality animation drawing every frame by hand. Only very experienced animators can do this fast enough to compete with the other 3D or vector-based animators; even some of the more inexperienced 3D and vector animators can put out more feet of film, per week, than seasoned, traditional pros can.

And, among those very productive 2D animators, nearly all of them are using one of two vector-based products.

How can TVPaint and its dedicated team of developers cause their product to overcome this, the most critical objection? I know this would not be easy, nor would it be fast. But, time is wasting and budgets are running low. The big guys can always outlast the little ones, where money is concerned. Yet, I do think there is a chance for TVPaint to show itself superior in every single aspect of 2D production. All the product lacks, at this juncture in history, is an independent, tweened, vector-based linework layer. That's it. Add this and the product will blow everything else away, period.

Greg Smith

Gaining market share is all well and good, but the question must be asked, is there any other reason why TV Paint should want to go this route? It begins to sound like it should become something it does not want to nor ever intended to be, just to gain Market share.

Who is the target market? You very rarely find artists or studios who do both cheap vector work and full animation.

Yojimbo:

No, market share is not everything, but survival may be. I have no idea what the financial situation within TVPaint Developpement is, and am not likely to ever know, but seeing as how nearly the entire animation production world has gone the way of cheaper regardless of quality, can't mean a boom for the TVPaint developers. I don't even know if there exist any statistics showing what portion of the animation production market is occupied by high end animation, but I'm sure it is not very large. Less and less quality is becoming apparent, even in high end animated commercials, and non-existent in animated weekly TV series.

But who says that adding a tweenable, morphable vector layer on top of the already excellent toolset that TVPaint contains will cause the product to, in some way, become inferior? Why, if TVPaint already is the tool of choice for quality animation producers, everywhere, or, at least, somewhere, would giving it the tools for faster, cleaner linework creation send it in a direction it would never want to go?

Nobody will be forced to use this new toolset, but those who do will be able to work faster and more efficiently. Not only so, but now, for the first time in 2D animated history, will the 2D animator be equipped to work in any style, fashion, quality, speed that he wants to work. And, this same creative professional will have every single tool needed for both character animation, background creation, multiplane camera rendering, special effects and compositing, all at his immediate disposal, all within this single TVPaint environment. The possibility really excites me, for sure, and I'm sure others will be thrilled, as well.

Why not go for it, you TVPaint guys? Of course, I'm talking through my hat, not being a programmer, nor having the slightest inkling of how much work and how much cost would be involved in producing this kind of vector toolset. But, I'm pretty sure I'm right regarding how attractive such an addition would be to the majority of 2D animators and producers. And, if you keep the price low, as it is now, I'm pretty sure very few could resist the attraction.

Just a thought,

Greg Smith