Expert: Russell Calabrese - 8/17/2011

Question
Hi Russell,

I've been animating on flash for a while, and I've been having far too many problems with it (I suppose it's all to do with the large number of layers I've been using as well as the mass of imported material from Photoshop and Illustrator). I'm looking for a good replacement for flash, one with a good digital painting interface or can at least handle all my photoshop files without being thrown off sync. Do you have any good suggestions?

Thanks!

Jill

Answer
Hi Jill,

I work in Flash a lot 'professionally' and have the same crumby problems. Memory hits the ceiling and the computer freezes; you fill a colour and everything goes black. There are som many things wrong with Flash and they never seem to fix it. I sound like a Turrets patient yelling out expletives while working. I put the word professionally in quotes because the program is anything but professional. I even have a little tune I sing when Flash does things it shouldn't called "Things I hate about Flash!"  There are a lot of user groups online to find workarounds for the problems you're having. Sometimes you have to export seperate layers and recombine them in Final Cut Pro or AfterEffects

At this point in time there isn't really a completely new program out there that doesn't have it's problems.

The best I have found  is ToonBoom Animator Pro. It's expensive and has a heavy learning curve. I've been starting to work in this.Disney is using it now. (you might have heard of that company)
Keep your chops up in Flash. Many studios still use it.


Here's the website for it:
http://beta.toonboom.com/professionals/animate-pro

Hope this helps.

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