Hello wise animation gurus.
Until now, most of the 2d work I've done has been drawn and animated in flash purely because it's quick and easy to do. However, I really don't like the limited nature of Flash's paint tools and want to do more detailed and precise artwork.
I'm accustomed to working in Photoshop (CS3) for my still work, but using it to draw frames of an animation is pretty annoying the way I'm doing it.
I work with around 5-10 layers in each still. After I've drawn a frame I save it as a png and use Fireworks to collate it (this is when I'm making short gifs). Thing is, every time I start a new frame I have to save it as a photoshop file to maintain the layers for when I come back and make alterations, then add more layers to work on the next frame.
The problem with this is a) it takes up a lot of disk-space saving every frame as both a psd and png and b) It takes ages for each frame.
Has anyone got any suggestions on how I could speed the process without compromising the quality and layer composition of the frames?
*apologies if this makes no sense. Very tired*
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Zumf.
I think AfterEffects would really suit your production style. You can bring PSDs directly in, save them in folders, create multiple compositions, nested compositions, it has great paint features and (of course) effects.
Size will still be an issue so buy more memory and get a portable hard drive for storage.
I think trying to force Photoshop into being an animation application is always going to take more extra time than it's worth.
If you want a more textured , painterly look I'd suggest TVPaint Animation. I like to think of TVPaint as "Photoshop for animators".
There's a free Trial version here .
I put up a site with a collection of examples animated in TVPaint:
TVP Animation
Thanks to both David and B'ine for your advice.
I've only tried after-effects on video sources so far and not as a direct animation tool. I'll have a fiddle around with it but trying to learn a program of that complexity always takes a while. Do you know of any after-effects tutorials that would be helpful to someone in my position?
Despite Photoshop not being the perfect tool for animators I think I'll stick with it (at least for now) because it's the program I've had the most experience and success with so far.
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Zumf.