What do I need to make a professional anime?

[sayshell]

I have good art skills, I just need the right software. I tried animestudios 9.5 and was horribly disappointed. What I want is the following...
1) computer monitor that I can draw on using a digital pen
2) software that is more drawing oriented, with BASIC animation features. Basically the only feature I really need is "fill in the blank frames" meaning I draw 2-3 frames and the computer generates all the transition frames in between. Aside from that just basic layering features, and simple interface. I would definitely rather have less features and good reliable interface that doesn't take 10 years to learn, than a million features I might use once every 10 years.

Does such a thing exist? Thanks a lot for your help!

[Vintniv]

A Wacom tablet and almost any version of Photoshop.

[sayshell]

I have a wacom tablet but it's a piece of junk. You can't see the computer screen on the tablet, so it's basically useless. + it doesn't go where you move your pen, so you gotta scroll across the tablet 10 X to move the edge of the monitor. Is there more than 1 kind? Photoshop... hmm what about for compiling the footage? can photoshop do that too?

[Bulf]

I have a wacom tablet but it's a piece of junk. You can't see the computer screen on the tablet, so it's basically useless. + it doesn't go where you move your pen, so you gotta scroll across the tablet 10 X to move the edge of the monitor. Is there more than 1 kind? Photoshop... hmm what about for compiling the footage? can photoshop do that too?

If you want to see the screen on your tablet, be prepared for some deep pockets; most people will get Cintiq's for that, but honestly, I have a Bamboo and it's working fine for me. I've had it for two years now, and I've never had a problem with it. Your sounds like it may be a driver/preference issue. As far as the footage goes, I'm sure PS CS6 can handle videos well (I know older versions support videos as well, but i'm not sure HOW well), but I'd say go for After Effects (for special effects) and Premiere (for general video things). You could try Flash, but I'm not a fan of Flash.

If you're serious about it though, you'd be better off finding a team of some sort, so there's not just -one- person doing the whole thing. Animation is hard. Making good animation is very hard. Take a look at the credits at the end of an anime, and if you're prepared to do all of that (by yourself or with a team), I look forward to whatever you can pull off! Good luck.

[Zeno Gomeii]

Mostly everything breaks down to photoshop.

[sayshell]

Most anime are hand drawn though. If I use a computer and can generate transition frames, then that solves like 90% of time. All I really need is someone to write music and 2 good vocalists who can do 10-20 voices per person. So really 4 people max, and realistically I can probably just learn to write music my self and be one of the vocalists thus all I need is 1 other person. Female voice actor, and I am guessing I can find some software to synthesize that so hopefully just me. I took a look at photoshop and it does do transition frames so I guess I will go with that. I want as little featuers as possible so I am guessing after effects and what not are too complex.

[Vintniv]

Most anime are hand drawn though. If I use a computer and can generate transition frames, then that solves like 90% of time. All I really need is someone to write music and 2 good vocalists who can do 10-20 voices per person. So really 4 people max, and realistically I can probably just learn to write music my self and be one of the vocalists thus all I need is 1 other person. Female voice actor, and I am guessing I can find some software to synthesize that so hopefully just me. I took a look at photoshop and it does do transition frames so I guess I will go with that. I want as little featuers as possible so I am guessing after effects and what not are too complex.

Aha, I think you're expecting too much before getting started. Doing even one simple GIF animation is HARD WORK; and I'm not kidding on that. I think its also worth mentioning that a good tablet, monitor, program, etc will only take you so far, you need some talent to go along with that. Its really not about the medium that makes the artist good. Anyone can pirate Photoshop, not that I'm saying you should do that, but simply having it doesnt mean you have a master skill set.

[sayshell]

[QUOTE=Serated;2789430]Aha, I think you're expecting too much before getting started. Doing even one simple GIF animation is HARD WORK; and I'm not kidding on that. I think its also worth mentioning that a good tablet, monitor, program, etc will only take you so far, you need some talent to go along with that. Its really not about the medium that makes the artist good. Anyone can pirate Photoshop, not that I'm saying you should do that, but simply having it doesnt mean you have a master skill set.[/QUOTE

I have been drawing manga for 10 years. Like I said I don't want complex software. I am 100% confident in my art skills, I just want software that is super simple and will allow me to use them. I am a smart person and learn things really really fast. I downloaded photoshop, and you can't draw at all in it. Maybe I got the wrong version. CS6 or whatever costs 1000$, and I don't believe in stealing things, so is there a cheaper version that does the same stuff?

[Tenrou Nogitsune]

Good luck, Sayshell-san.

[Vintniv]

[QUOTE=sayshell;2789431]

Aha, I think you're expecting too much before getting started. Doing even one simple GIF animation is HARD WORK; and I'm not kidding on that. I think its also worth mentioning that a good tablet, monitor, program, etc will only take you so far, you need some talent to go along with that. Its really not about the medium that makes the artist good. Anyone can pirate Photoshop, not that I'm saying you should do that, but simply having it doesnt mean you have a master skill set.[/QUOTE

I have been drawing manga for 10 years. Like I said I don't want complex software. I am 100% confident in my art skills, I just want software that is super simple and will allow me to use them. I am a smart person and learn things really really fast. I downloaded photoshop, and you can't draw at all in it. Maybe I got the wrong version. CS6 or whatever costs 1000$, and I don't believe in stealing things, so is there a cheaper version that does the same stuff?

Kay, well, uh...

Off the top of my head you could say your student (so long as you have like a student ID or ways of proving you're in college or what not) in which case you can get PS6 for half the price. There's no difference between the regular and student edition besides the price.

Alternatively, you could buy an older version of PS, some older variants are sold on the cheap because professional places like colleges, etc, always upgrade their computers with the newest version, so they help save money by selling their older ones on the cheap.

If PS isnt your flair, I would suggest trying alternative programs dedicated exclusively to painting. SAI and COREL are the two I can think of right off the top of my head. They're cheaper, more versatile, and exclusively are dedicated to painting but have very similar setups for them as PS. Layers, brushes, palettes etc. Not sure how they operate in terms of animation though. They are also much cheaper than PS because they are specialty programs.

[Cantelope]

The feature you're looking for is called 'tweening' (short for in-betweening iirc). Programs with this feature use some algorithm to automatically generate frames between two frames to simulate a smooth transition. Different programs will implement this in different ways, some better than others; but yeah, generally you're just looking for programs with tweening.

Photoshop has basic tweening support in versions CS5 and CS6 -- I don't know about earlier versions.
Flash obviously has it, it's built for animation (remember that everything in Flash is a vector object, it can't really take a static painted image and then tween it accurately to a second painted image)
??? I don't know about other animation programs.

[sayshell]

Thanks for all the advice! Looks like ps4 is the way to go! I can get cs4 for 250$ which is reasonable enough. Question though have any of you used it, or is their a website I can try before I buy? The adobe website doesn't let you do this.

[blueangel06661]

Thanks for all the advice! Looks like ps4 is the way to go! I can get cs4 for 250$ which is reasonable enough. Question though have any of you used it, or is their a website I can try before I buy? The adobe website doesn't let you do this.

I made a tutorial on super basic animation before: http://www.animeforum.com/showthread...asic-animation
Will need to fully understand the concept I used for this tutorial if you want to do something more advanced.

You can find something to try here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads.html?promoid=JZEFS

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However realistically you're not going to get very far though. Have you thought this through? It doesn't seem like you have. Do you even know how most anime's are created? People who create anime specialize in one thing, they don't do it all. You have your producer, your concept artist, your character designer, your storyboarder, your background artist, your clean-up artist and so forth. Where's your portfolio? Really your best bet is to pick an area you want to specialize in and create a portfolio to pitch it to studios.

One person run things of this scale never come out looking good (Most never even seem to come that far to be completed anyways). But that's just my opinion.

[sayshell]

I made a tutorial on super basic animation before: http://www.animeforum.com/showthread...asic-animation
Will need to fully understand the concept I used for this tutorial if you want to do something more advanced.

You can find something to try here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads.html?promoid=JZEFS

-------

However realistically you're not going to get very far though. Have you thought this through? It doesn't seem like you have. Do you even know how most anime's are created? People who create anime specialize in one thing, they don't do it all. You have your producer, your concept artist, your character designer, your storyboarder, your background artist, your clean-up artist and so forth. Where's your portfolio? Really your best bet is to pick an area you want to specialize in and create a portfolio to pitch it to studios.

One person run things of this scale never come out looking good (Most never even seem to come that far to be completed anyways). But that's just my opinion.

Of course I have. You don't need nearly that much. In the past any good type of production music/movies took tons of money and people.. As time goes on tons of musicians can compose anything with just 1 person and technology. Hopefully anime will get more to the point where it takes 0 skill and 1 person to produce anything possible, but for now I think it still does take a lot of skill. Anyhow I think 1 person could pull it off for sure, if they are ambitious. 1 ambitious person = 25 regular people.