Any recommendations for software together with Flash?

[nancy_kelpie]

I'm using Flash now for my animations and would like to learn a 2nd software program next to it to be able to do more things with animation. I use Flash because I mostly use it for making Flash games. A few months ago I got a TV animation project though and discovered that Flash wasn't very handy for that. I even had to ask the producer to convert my FLA to another extension. This started me thinking of learning a 2nd program and I also would like a program with more effects and other tricks to play with, because I read everywhere Flash is a limited program.

Can anyone recommend me a 2nd program I should learn? There are so many programs I can't choose.

I want to use it for:
- Animations in Flash games (Is this even possible? An animation should only be a few KB....)
- SWF animations (for websites)
- TV animations

I'm thinking about After Effects... with that program I should be able to convert my FLA into an AVI (for TV) and it also has some special effects and other tricks Flash can't do, I don't think I can use it for Flash games though.

Then Toon Boom says they offer software that makes animating faster... that would be great... but the end result isn't a SWF file, right? Can I import it in Flash and make it a SWF and save it as a small file size that's needed on the web?

Then there is Anime studio... it's vector, but can I copy it to Flash to make a game with it? and is t better than Flash or just the same? and there are a lot of more programs I can't remember at the moment. It looks like every animator uses a different program... any advice?

[someynguy]

:confident I recommend After Effects. It works great for both web and television. For TV, you can import swf files straight into AE for advanced video editing and effects. Video and image sequence compression in AE works great as well, so it can work wonders with Flash for web content. For example, you could make some looped button sequences (or an entire video for streaming) in AE and import them into Flash for scripting.

I’m not sure about Toon Boom and Anime Studio. I haven’t ever tried them out, but I would like to know if they make animating any faster. Maybe I'll download a demo from their website sometime.

[Atreides]

If all you need is to convert your SWFs into broadcast format you could probably get a tape transfer place to convert your files and output them to tape in the required formats pretty cheaply. You just have to know how to set up your original file properties to avoid interlacing or any other nasty side effects of upsizing and changing frame rate.

A standard pipeline flow is: export a frame sequence out of Flash into Premeire pro for sound and editing and then export to file and send it to the tape output place.

You really need to do your research before investing in another piece of software. A lot of animation software doesn't really output to true broadcast standard except in the pro level apps for which they charge a lot.

After Effects as mentioned is awesome for compositing. If you're doing music vids or motion graphics you must have it. But it churns out the worst, cheapassedest character animation ever in my (ancient) experience.

Many cartoons are made using Flash for broadcast, but the files have to be exported for soundtrack and dialogue Because of Flash's absolute lack of useable sound capability and it's sound sync problems

Toon Boom products are good for vector animation and do a lot of the character anim stuff that flash can but with an interface designed with the needs of a traditional animator in mind. The vector drawing tools are far superior to Flash. Other cool things like animatable multi cam setups make these products pretty handy. Good IK system

Anime Studio I've never used but it seems to be just for IK setups of cutout figures which doesn't really give you much flexibility in design.

Digicel Flipbook is very widely used among traditional pro animators for cartoons but as I understand it only the pro version really has the flexibility to go straight to broadcast.


TVPaint? heard some good things but the website is so crap that I have my doubts.

[nancy_kelpie]

Thanks for your replies!

I really need something for TV for small animations for children shows. I thought when I buy a new program anyway maybe I can choose something with extra options, effects, etc. The PRO versions are very expensive though... so I think I will try using Flash a bit more. The CS4 version also has a bone function, which make it a lot better already. I do like Flash, but I'm sure animating can be better.

Atreides, thanks for some more names! I will check them out :)

Someynguy, the website where I saw Toonboom is faster is this one:
http://betterflashanimation.com/ , funny title for a blog about Toonboom ;)