I finally got around to installing this 2D animation program and feeling my way around the UI. Already I have the feeling that this software will become addictive and open up new areas of creativity for me. I also upgraded to the latest version although haven't yet installed that, so the experience will get better since the upgrade is pretty significant, with all manner of new work-flows that were called for. The fact that I can export animated elements out of this and into After Effects for deeper compositing and look refinement means I have little excuse now to start doing some cool animation.
There's even a user forum to log into, and it seems to be a pretty lively and helpful place to hang out. I found this artist's blog link and here's his work reel.
I find Victor Paredes work so inspiring, it appears that this is one of those softwares that allow artists to fully express themselves, the different styles in the video attest to that. You can animate frame by frame in a more traditional cell style, or implement bone rigs for a puppet-ed approach, I think you can even bring in 3D characters (although I'm not interested in that side of it). Then there are amazing vector tools and brushes that are just super nice to work with, even just for illustration purposes. I hope to be able to get my head into this app and begin producing work with it. As soon as I turn out anything half decent I will likely post it here in these pages.
