HappyLand tutorial files
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
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jhaustin1969
- Posts: 61
- Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:47 pm
- Location: Massachusetts
No probs.
For what its worth, when I first got Moho (before it was called Anime Studio) I categorically went through each and every tutorial that came with the program, one by one, word for word, and if necessary redid each step until I fully understood what it was trying to demonstrate.
It was slightly painful, but in a few days I had a workable grasp of what Moho was capable of, what tools it was offering me to enable me to perform various tasks, and from there I had a good idea of the 'landscape' that I was dealing with.
The tutorials are really good; the included ones. I made sure I didn't skip anything, or breeze through any of the instructions, or miss out any reference to a tool - made sure I knew where the tool was, and forced myself to complete the tutorials, even if I thought I got the general gist of what the tut was aiming at - I'd enter everything as they suggested, and instead of hypothetically doing it, actually *doing* it.
The pacing of them is good, they're well thought out, and well worth completing.
For what its worth, when I first got Moho (before it was called Anime Studio) I categorically went through each and every tutorial that came with the program, one by one, word for word, and if necessary redid each step until I fully understood what it was trying to demonstrate.
It was slightly painful, but in a few days I had a workable grasp of what Moho was capable of, what tools it was offering me to enable me to perform various tasks, and from there I had a good idea of the 'landscape' that I was dealing with.
The tutorials are really good; the included ones. I made sure I didn't skip anything, or breeze through any of the instructions, or miss out any reference to a tool - made sure I knew where the tool was, and forced myself to complete the tutorials, even if I thought I got the general gist of what the tut was aiming at - I'd enter everything as they suggested, and instead of hypothetically doing it, actually *doing* it.
The pacing of them is good, they're well thought out, and well worth completing.
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jhaustin1969
- Posts: 61
- Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:47 pm
- Location: Massachusetts
Terribly guilty of NOT doing the tutorials that come with AS. I will be guilty No more!!
I am an IT person and always want people to RTFM. Double standard for me I guess. Bah!
Thanks for putting me on the right path. I've already done several of the tuts in the manual. I have much work to do, see ya!
Joe
I am an IT person and always want people to RTFM. Double standard for me I guess. Bah!
Thanks for putting me on the right path. I've already done several of the tuts in the manual. I have much work to do, see ya!
Joe
I think for a general understanding of the basics, the tutorials are great.
Having thought about it, though, there are some specifics that it doesn't get to, like, I have some best practices when rigging characters and particular ways of grouping characters characters in group layers with nesting, like having separate horizontal and vertical groups for moving characters around, to allow for the most flexible way of animating, as well as getting really nice smooth motion curves, say, for when a character jumps or something. Also, I'd have some good tips for Photoshop / Anime Studio integration, working between the two. Learned the trial and error way and made many 'mistakes' to learn those lessons.
Anyways, I haven't really used AS for recent projects, opting for Toon Boom Animate for its frame-by-frame capabilities, but I used to use Anime Studio for EVERYTHING including frame-by-frame stuff drawn in Photoshop.
So, I guess I feel like I'm not really utilizing enough or sharing enough the stuff I learned with AS, with technical workflow stuff, as I forge on with other freelance projects, and I don't want to put out half-baked stuff either. Also don't want to blow anything up like I'm a guru and have all the answers, but I really put in probably hundreds of hours with Anime Studio, starting from Moho years ago, through to animating a weekly / bi-weekly 5-minute show for local TV for a while, through to animating many music videos and my own 52-part series with it, so at one point I was using it from morning till noon, pretty much daily, and I learned a couple things whilst using it.
Not sure where I'm going with this rambling ... I suppose its a general thing where people who have gone through the thousands of mistakes to arrive at some knowledge - sometimes that stuff isn't passed down to new users. I'm so grateful to Richard Williams for his book 'The Animator's Survival Kit' because that kind of opened up a whole vault of animation stuff and made it accessible for me. So, I think the included tutorials and great for new users to Anime Studio and they'd stand anyone in good stead. But there is a whole bunch more to talk about that I think would be useful...stuff like how Photoshop integration works by reading the bottom-most layer in Photoshop, so if you add a new layer to a linked Photoshop layer, be sure to place the layer at the top of the stack, so when you save Anime Studio doesn't reference a whole bunch of newly incorrect layers, and, a bit more basic, how a number of scenes might be placed in the same AS file, simply by using switch ayers, and, how to speed up rendering by switching off layers and effects that aren't currently showing up on screen as AS renders EVERYTHING that's on, even if it isn't directly on-screen, so a smoke effect you have 3km off-screen is still being rendered if its on, and, and, and...
So, I guess I'll wait and see if I can get this seed to grow into something more, whether to do it totally independently or something else.
This forum has been pretty awesome, and I haven't been nearly as active as I used to be, but there are issues that seem to crop up for new users over and over, like how people do 'floaty-moon-gravity' like animations with Anime Studio, and how this can be prevented, etc...
Anyways. Peace.
Having thought about it, though, there are some specifics that it doesn't get to, like, I have some best practices when rigging characters and particular ways of grouping characters characters in group layers with nesting, like having separate horizontal and vertical groups for moving characters around, to allow for the most flexible way of animating, as well as getting really nice smooth motion curves, say, for when a character jumps or something. Also, I'd have some good tips for Photoshop / Anime Studio integration, working between the two. Learned the trial and error way and made many 'mistakes' to learn those lessons.
Anyways, I haven't really used AS for recent projects, opting for Toon Boom Animate for its frame-by-frame capabilities, but I used to use Anime Studio for EVERYTHING including frame-by-frame stuff drawn in Photoshop.
So, I guess I feel like I'm not really utilizing enough or sharing enough the stuff I learned with AS, with technical workflow stuff, as I forge on with other freelance projects, and I don't want to put out half-baked stuff either. Also don't want to blow anything up like I'm a guru and have all the answers, but I really put in probably hundreds of hours with Anime Studio, starting from Moho years ago, through to animating a weekly / bi-weekly 5-minute show for local TV for a while, through to animating many music videos and my own 52-part series with it, so at one point I was using it from morning till noon, pretty much daily, and I learned a couple things whilst using it.
Not sure where I'm going with this rambling ... I suppose its a general thing where people who have gone through the thousands of mistakes to arrive at some knowledge - sometimes that stuff isn't passed down to new users. I'm so grateful to Richard Williams for his book 'The Animator's Survival Kit' because that kind of opened up a whole vault of animation stuff and made it accessible for me. So, I think the included tutorials and great for new users to Anime Studio and they'd stand anyone in good stead. But there is a whole bunch more to talk about that I think would be useful...stuff like how Photoshop integration works by reading the bottom-most layer in Photoshop, so if you add a new layer to a linked Photoshop layer, be sure to place the layer at the top of the stack, so when you save Anime Studio doesn't reference a whole bunch of newly incorrect layers, and, a bit more basic, how a number of scenes might be placed in the same AS file, simply by using switch ayers, and, how to speed up rendering by switching off layers and effects that aren't currently showing up on screen as AS renders EVERYTHING that's on, even if it isn't directly on-screen, so a smoke effect you have 3km off-screen is still being rendered if its on, and, and, and...
So, I guess I'll wait and see if I can get this seed to grow into something more, whether to do it totally independently or something else.
This forum has been pretty awesome, and I haven't been nearly as active as I used to be, but there are issues that seem to crop up for new users over and over, like how people do 'floaty-moon-gravity' like animations with Anime Studio, and how this can be prevented, etc...
Anyways. Peace.
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jhaustin1969
- Posts: 61
- Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:47 pm
- Location: Massachusetts
Even in your ramblings you are teaching. It's just in you man!
I would love to see tutorials from you, even if I have to pay for them, but you have to do what's right for you.
Maybe throw out a few small tuts and see what kind of traffic you get to them, to help you decide. Just a thought!
Thanks!
Joe
I would love to see tutorials from you, even if I have to pay for them, but you have to do what's right for you.
Maybe throw out a few small tuts and see what kind of traffic you get to them, to help you decide. Just a thought!
Thanks!
Joe
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neeters_guy
- Posts: 1626
- Joined: Mon Sep 14, 2009 7:33 pm
- Contact:
The Guy and Girl files you released a while ago sum up your workflow pretty well I think. Maybe you could expand that with more annotations?
Your experience with AS is without peer and no doubt tutorials of advanced techniques would be a fantastic resource, and a record for posterity as well. I recall a lot of good tips and videos posted in your threads over last several years. Of course most beginners won't go to the trouble of digging up that info (and some of it has been deleted), so maybe there's a value in putting it all in one place.
On the other hand, making good tutorils is time consuming and I honestly don't know if there's market for it to justify the time. Also, there've been a couple debacles with paid tutorials on this forum, so maybe members are little gun shy at this point (at least on pre-orders)?
However, the art is on the amateurish side, bad even, and some of the lessons only barely relate to the principle being taught. This is mainly good for learning the basic mechanics of AS.
Your experience with AS is without peer and no doubt tutorials of advanced techniques would be a fantastic resource, and a record for posterity as well. I recall a lot of good tips and videos posted in your threads over last several years. Of course most beginners won't go to the trouble of digging up that info (and some of it has been deleted), so maybe there's a value in putting it all in one place.
On the other hand, making good tutorils is time consuming and I honestly don't know if there's market for it to justify the time. Also, there've been a couple debacles with paid tutorials on this forum, so maybe members are little gun shy at this point (at least on pre-orders)?
Heh, I bought this actually. I agree it's a bit overpriced plus you need a AS6 license to purchase it. It is a nice package though: Professionaly typeset, spiral bound, offset printed, and includes a CD. The lessons are described step-by-step so even complete the newbie can follow them.InfoCentral wrote:Smith Micro does have, what I consider way overpriced, tutorial book that is based on an earlier version. It is available on Content Paradise.
However, the art is on the amateurish side, bad even, and some of the lessons only barely relate to the principle being taught. This is mainly good for learning the basic mechanics of AS.
Totally agree with you man.Also, there've been a couple debacles with paid tutorials on this forum, so maybe members are little gun shy at this point (at least on pre-orders)?
I'd like to get a proper budget for it so that I could afford to set aside a decent chunk of time, but I'm not quite sure where that would come from, besides myself. Even then, as you say, I'm not sure whether I'd break even from it with sales. Other option is to kind of do off-the-cuff stuff for free. May not be as tight or polished as something that's been well-planned and trimmed of excess fat though. But, it'd be free, and I imagine more in the way of an explainer video when I use Anime Studio for another project.
The guy and girl file - aah, ok, I kind of forgot about that. I remember I sold that on my old site. Yep, that's a good example of how I'd use stuff within Anime Studio, drawing stuff as well as animating it. Using raster stuff's a little different - not too much, but you're right, that is a good example.
Anyways, nice to chat. I might have even tried a little Kickstarter thing. I did it for another project and got accepted (this is probably over a year ago) to do it. I was so stoked. Then I realized I'd need an American bank account to continue, which I don't have. So, my kickstarter affair ended there. I tried contacting AmericanWest Bank to see if they'd let me open an account, but no reply. And I get the feeling that contacting even a buddy in America to use his account would come across a little scam-artist-ey and I'd rather not go the route of using someone else's bank account. So, maybe one day Kickstarter will allow me to open up a crowd-funded project with PayPal or something. Wanted to make a cool animated short and get funding for that. But, I'm just doing my own stuff anyway between projects.
Anyhoo, kiff.
As a total off-the-topic deviation, I've been re-playing 'Abe's Odyssey' now that its a download PS3 title. It rocks.
I have the AS6 Official Guide. Even though I had AS7 it was a great resource. How large is the AS tutorial market?
I have a book on another subject that is a collaboration of different authors. A compilation by some of our top animators would be a 'must have' book.
'Marketing' might be one compelling chapter.
I have a book on another subject that is a collaboration of different authors. A compilation by some of our top animators would be a 'must have' book.
'Marketing' might be one compelling chapter.
Cheers, Larry
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InfoCentral
- Posts: 935
- Joined: Fri May 26, 2006 8:35 pm
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
Your best bet would be to contact a American bank that is also international. Two that come to mind are CitiBank and Chase. They either have their own banks or have agreements with banks all over the world. I like it because when I travel I can use the ATM machines and not get charged an ATM fee; just the currency exchange rate.Mikdog wrote:Then I realized I'd need an American bank account to continue, which I don't have.
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