Cartoon Doctor - www.drmussey.com

I used to think “cut-out” animation was cheating. Since Animate Pro came out, I’ve become a big believer in such a system. I’m working on an animation for a British medical company. I decided to use a cut-out technique. We’ll see how it goes. Here are the characters in exploded cut-out view. Here they are in assembled form. Wish me luck.

The ideal combination for Toon Boom products is at least a moderately powerful desktop and a Wacom brand tablet. Sometimes, however, you find yourself needing to animate in places where this bulky setup is simply not possible. Enter: The Tablet PC! My job has allowed me to use and test many brands of Tablet PC’s over the years. Do I hesitate to issue advice on using a Tablet PC with Toon Boom software? Well….yes. …But I still love the combination! Tablet PC’s are amazing, but can be a bit of a headache when running traditional artist programs. This includes both Toon Boom and Adobe products. “Out of the box” they can be a bit of a challenge. On the other hand, once you have a tuned and working combination, it makes a great animation tool. Let me give you some tips. First: What is a Tablet PC? In my job as a physician, I use a Tablet PC nonstop throughout the day. It is amazing how many patients say, “Cool! What’s that? I’ve never seen that before? Is that a Mac?” Unfort...

How fast can you create a new animation? Can you create a regular animation for websites on an everyday or every other day basis, using one animator? Yes, some artists have done this, but it is really difficult and often the animation is quite crude. Can it look like some time may have been invested in the project? In other words, can you create something that looks like it took far longer than it really took you to create? In other words, “more for less?” This past week, I traveled to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. Everyone is doing their own version of reporting and I wanted to add something unique to the website we were involved in creating for our regional newspaper at fredericksburg.com The tool: Toon Boom Animate Pro and a Tablet PC The result is at: www.fredericksburg.com/it/ces Twenty-four hours prior to the show, I spent about five hours on a desktop with a Cintiq creating characters, backgrounds, and cameras for the animation. Toon Boom’s prod...

CES 2010 is all about 3D. It is everywhere! Sometimes, it feels like every vendor has simply thrown up something and called it 3D. Even the CES information kiosk monitor says 3D. Toon Boom has dominated the 2D market. Toon Boom is not a 3D rendering program….or is it? Toon Boom has a lot of 3D capabilities, but it has a different look. Toon Boom is not for rendering a “Toy Story” type of animation. But, the 3D effects possible in Toon Boom can create a totally different look that no one has yet appreciated. Many may remember the Viewmaster toy that allowed you to see views in 3D. Many of the slides had characters like Bugs Bunny that were actually 2D drawings, but placed with different positioning in relation to other characters and the background objects. The view was a very interesting type of 3D cartoon. The drawings were 2D, but were positioned in a 3D world. See where I am going with this? Toon Boom’s animation programs, especially Animate Pro, are able to work with 3D s...

We're live from CES and Andrew's reports are getting big coverage from www.fredericksburg.com and you can see the site here http://ces.ajama.org/

We’re all excited about CES 2010 in Las Vegas this month and we have our animated team of reporters ready, thanks to Toon Boom’s Animate Pro. See if you can spot the 3-D effects in this animation…