[tksrip]

First impression right out of the gate (without searching for help):

 

The Good

I like the placement of the frame number. No guessing. It is clearly marked.

I like the ease of importing premade animation frames.

I like the how simple and straight forward it is to start a new project. It requests all information needed without having to hunt down where to input (such as frame count).

 

The Bad

I don’t like the placement of the x-sheet. To the point I won’t use the program if it cannot be moved below the viewing plane for the current animation. It complicated things and disrupts the pipeline flow. It also breaks up the viewing plane by forcing the user to hunt for the x sheet (IE left or right side)

I don’t like how audio is added to the current x-sheet. I keep trying to slide the audio to the proper place. But the x sheet placement is causing a continuous issue. The vertical x sheet made properly synching audio seem like an impossibility.

First animation loaded was faded, as though light table was on. But there was no indication of such. This caused confusion. At a glance, after no luck with finding out how to view a preview of a finished product (including audio and vibrant true color) I moved on.

Keep in mind these observations were made before attempting to locate help. I did this with the impression of being on a time crunch, such as animation studios are. You sometimes don’t have the time to look up answers and are forced to fix/find it yourself. Sadly, I was not able to locate solutions for the problems I faced. However, I do think the program has promise. My only true suggestion is an interface that is fully customizable. And once added, maybe a frame indicator for audio., Such as a frame highlight (like a different color) when audio is synched to a specific frame. These are my only suggestions for now. Keep it up. I really want to see the finished product.

 

 

[Niels]

Thanks a lot for your time testing and writing. I am happy that you are testing it without doing any reading/watching about usage first. My ambition is to hopefully make it simple/easy/intuitive enough for people to do exactly that – even though some concepts are naturally kind of complex. So it is not easily done. Of course. But comments like yours are extremely helpful for me – and I see I need to make some things, like the opacity of a layer (imported frames comes up in a 50% transparent reference layer) more obvious and the behavior of the software easier to understand in that situation.

Some of what you are saying is said by others too. I want to make sure Animation Paper is as good as possible – and at least give it its own inner logic that’s making sense for as many as possible. So I’d better listen 😉

Some of your points are of course a matter of preference and taste. Based on what you are used to. Naturally. A good example of that is the x-sheet which is, as I’m sure you are fully aware of, based on the traditional old school way of doing exposure sheets. I know many programs have a horizontal setup, but I believe the vertical way has its pros. Anyway, it is largely a matter of preference, so we might implement an option to make it horizontal at some point in the future. But for now we are sticking with what I see as the modern take on the traditional way.

Of course the direction of the x-sheet should not, and IS NOT, an impediment for making stuff like audio functionality work in an optimal fashion. Dragging the waveform up/down is an obvious feature that is planned long ago and will be added soon. But for now, as long as your audiotrack is cut correctly before importing, you should be just fine. All timing and highlighting should work just fine as far as I’m aware. 😉

I am not entirely sure I get your suggestion about “frame highlighting when in sync with audio”. Maybe you can elaborate a little please?

Many more customization possibilities are planned to be added soon for all the next alpha releases.

Thanks again,
Nieks