[Ruby Black]

Kia ora from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

I downloaded Animation Paper and have spent about half an hour meddling around inside of it. I just want to say thank you Niels for creating this software. I can’t express how relieving it is to be able to open a an animation software and say “oh yeah I can totally learn animation on this”.

I have tried multiple softwares – paid (Adobe Animate), trial versions (e.g. TVPaint), and free open source software (OpenToonz) and every time I have opened them and attempted to learn animation, I have been intimidated by the overload of features and find that I have spent way too much time and trouble banging my head against a wall trying to troubleshoot these softwares and figuring out how to do really basic things. It has always ended up in me giving up on learning. I want to learn animation, not software!

I realise that learning the tools of the trade is always a step one must take in any kind of learning endeavor, but learning the actual art of animation (key terms, timing, realistic movement, character design, storyboarding etc) is its own steep learning curve, and that’s the curve I want to be focusing on. I don’t want to be stopped short at the gates of software. I never could figure out why it had to feel so complicated when the old masters whose work I have admired so much literally just used paper, pencils and a lightbox. I feel fortunate that I at least have some good drawing and colouring fundamentals, I can’t imagine how intimidating it would be for a person who has no experience in the art world wanting to learn animation. Information overload!

I feel like with this software I can just get going and play around and learn the fundamentals of actual animation. I am very happy with this! I’m really looking forward to posting some of my practice animations to get some feedback from this community.

My question is this (sorry if it has been asked before) – I know that there is not yet a colouring/paint function available, which is fine for me as again, I’m just starting at the beginning. But I was wondering, when I get to the point where I’d like to start doing some colour work, how would I go about colouring it in another programme? Is it possible? I know my way around Photoshop well enough I guess, though I’m thinking of getting something opensource like Krita. I would just need some basic colouring functions really. What do you folk use, if anything? I have no idea how this stuff works haha pardon my ignorance.

Thanks again Niels for this fab software and thanks for making the pre-release available for us. I’m excited to learn again.

 

 

[Niels]

Hi Ruby! Very kind words and music to my ears 😉 Thank you!

Yes, colouring is coming as a free update first thing after our main release. We already worked quite a lot on it – and it is going to be great.

As you want to learn, I encourage you to focus on the actual animation. I mean, do rough key drawings as you get your timing and basic movement working. Then do breakdowns and then refine doing a tie down pass on a new layer – and so on. All this is the most important for training your animation skills.

If you want to color your work at some point, we have made Animation Paper so it is easy to export to other software. There’s plenty of options. And when it comes to choice of colouring software, pretty much anything goes. Photoshop and Krita would both be excellent choices (until AP is ready for colouring of course! ;)).

For Photoshop you can export your frames as numbered drawings and layers. This way, if you have drawings that are reused, you only color one of the copies. After colouring you can assemble the complete animation. For Krita I would export as OCA (Open Cell Animation) format. Krita will import this format directly and thus keep track of your held or reused drawings (clones) as well as layers. You’ll find out. And if something turns out to be confusing, let me know. 😉

I wish you the best of luck with you learning to animate! You will need a little patience to do animation, but it is sooo exciting to watch your work come to life!

Cheers,
Niels

[Ruby Black]

I appreciate your detailed and helpful response. I’m really looking forward to diving in!