Toon Boom Studio V3 – 2D Animation
reviewed by Robert Pritchett
ToonBoom Animation, Inc. 7, rue Laurier East Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2T 1E4 (514) 278-8666 Fax: (514) 278-2666 Product Site: http://www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio/ Released: July 6, 2005 $400 USD, €219 Euro. Not to be confused with Toon Boom Solo for $3,000 USD. http://www.toonboom.com/buy/onlinestore/customer/home.php Try before you buy by registering online to download at http://www.toonboom.com/products/trial_dwn/ Requirements: Macs - G5 or later; Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later; 512 MB RAM; 100 MB hard disk space; 24-bit color display with 64 MB video RAM; 1024x768 resolution; Wacom Tablet recommended. Wintel - Pentium III 800Mhz or higher processor; Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP and the other requirements noted above for the Mac. For professionals who like to make electronically generated animated cartoons. Strengths: Competes nicely with Flash and then some.
Forum: http://www.toonboom.com/support/forums/toonBoomStudio/ Toon Boom was previously reviewed in September 2004. This is Toon Boom Studio V3! Other Reviews: http://www.toonboom.com/company/news/reviews.php Animation Links: http://www.toonboom.com/company/animationlinks.php |
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Toon Boom Studio V3 competes nicely with Flash for doing animated professional cartoons. Last time we looked at this lip-synching was big. This time it is a Cutter tool that can animate locally or by region using pivot-points. And text can be added. And the flow control has been improved for better interface activities.
The move is towards 3D with camera views, a Free Transform tool and depth of field. So there is a 2D drawing space and 3D scene mode.
And then there is the Cut Out tutorial on their website that is divided up into 7 QuickTime videos.
Apparently the main differences between Studio and Solo
besides the $2,600 USD price difference, is that Solo has a few 
more
high-tech drawing tools and special FX functions.
I’m nowhere proficient enough yet to even consider the Solo version, but wouldn’t it be nice to play with the high-tech tools? And HDTV and Film?
Inspiration!
I’ve been watching Hayao Miyazaki’s magnificent animated cartoon backgrounds
on Turner Classic Thursday
nights. Hayao Miyazaki sets the standard in sophisticated, quality cartooning and turning Manga (usually one-shot pics) into Anime (cartoon video).
For your own inspiration why not check these links out?
Here is the link to Ghibli Studio information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli
The master animator Hayao Miyazaki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
And the art of Manga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga
And Anime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime
These Ghibli releases are excellent cartoons that rival anything that Disney Studio did years ago (in fact, Disney licensed a few to show in English) and the other animation studios at the Big Carton Database http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/. Pixar Animation Studios comes even closer http://www.pixar.com/. The synergy between Pixar and Disney Studios should be worth seeing now that they "are one".
But Joy of Tech could be more animated, don’t you think? http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/ Or made into a movie? After all, they did do a book we reviewed a while ago. Heck, if Charles M. Schulz could do it for Peanuts, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts, why not you?
See what is in the Toon Boom Showcase to see what has been done using Toon Boom: http://www.toonboom.com/showcase/. There are hours of fun watching what others have created and given to Toon Boom Animation to, well, show off.
Here is the latest list of TV Productions that have been completed using Toon Boom animation: http://www.toonboom.com/showcase/pdf/TVProductionList.pdf There are 12 pages. For Feature Films, there is a 5-page list: http://www.toonboom.com/showcase/pdf/feature-list.pdf.
So go try before you buy and see what you can do with Toon Boom v3. The challenge is to see if you can do as well as Hayao Miyazaki. I dare you!
