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I have used TVPaint for a lot of things over the years. When I worked in Hollywood, I used it as my compositor on feature films, largely because I could create elements, track them and composite them into the film frame all in one place, like creating a cell phone or video camera display and applying it to the screen the guy in the film is holding. I certainly used it for compositing and post processing in all 3D animation since I worked in games long ago. I have been using it to put together my 2 and a half D films for over ten years.

Over time, though, I am starting to notice so many other pieces of software falling by the wayside in my workflow and more and more being done inside TVP. It's not just doing the final visuals either, but starting from the storyboards, particularly on short projects, I am moving towards going from zero to finish all in one TVP project file! The tool just gets more amazing with each version. This is a very liberating feeling because it leaves so much less to keep track of and dozens of asset folders can disappear from my project workflow.

I can imagine that as technology improves, and computers have more RAM and ever larger hard disks, I will work towards larger and large projects being done with such a convenient workflow. That is a future I am looking forward to!

Terrence, thank you very much for that interesting feedback. I am glad to know that TVPaint (team and software) helped you so much, release after release

Being the "swiss army knife" of the animation is in our minds for a long time and the evolution of the technology (powerful processors, more ram, 64 bit OS, more hard drive space...) allows us more and more to increase the software's possibilities.

Thank you again for your nice feedback. I hope other persons could add their opinion too =)

I started from just the opposite direction than Terrence. I got into computer 2D animation with D-Paint on the Amiga OS and later with TVPaint on Windows, which was sold under the name Aura and I believe it had just 3 layers and the LT was none existent; just a choice of 100% and 50%. Aura then became TVP again, then Mirage, Then both Mirage and TVPaint and finally (and hopefully forever) TVPaint. But all along I worked with no other software no matter the growing problems, so I adapted my drawing style and animation methods to the technical limitations while writing e-mails to TVP with complaints (err...suggestions) of what could be done better to help us professionals, until I got invited to become a beta tester.

This is because I saw TVPaint's potential to grow into what it has become today and each new improvement made me feel that this is finally all I need, therefore it never crossed my mind that other software brands could supplement what was missing in TVP. I didn't even know it could work. When I got frustrated and dissatisfied again, and TVP was slow in delivering what I needed, I asked dhomas trenn (aka Youngmonkey) if he could help me out with plugins.

I noticed something interesting happening to my style along the way (we are talking about a span of 12 or 15 years); my drawing abilities improved and I am absolutely certain that this correlated with both TVP's and Wacom's growth. The better TVP got and the Wacom tablets became, the better I drew. So again, since I was riding the roller-coaster of this is perfect, no it could be better, this is it, no it's not... it never occurred to me to look elsewhere. I just didn't know better than to use TVP and nothing else.

It's funny you say that, looking at TVPaint 10 today. I remember thinking back in the days of TVPaint 7, "What else could they possibly add to this program? It has everything I need!" Yet, TVPaint 10 is a dream tool.

My first introduction to doing animation on the computer was also on the Amiga and Deluxe Paint IV. I sidetracked later on with 3D stuff but am glad I came back to drawing animation on the computer instead. I discovered Mirage in 2007 (read about it in Tony White's book From Pencils to Pixels) and knew this was where I wanted to be!