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Tag Archives: software

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Animation software: Adobe After Effects (3), Character Animator (1), and Flash (2)

The PolyBlog
November 29 2020

Adobe always has awesome and powerful products and my hesitancy with it is more about their business model. Some time ago, Adobe went to the monthly fee price, and if you signed up for all of Adobe’s products in Canada, with the Cyber Monday deal that knocks a bunch off the cost, it is still $40 US a month, or about $52 a month/$600 a year. That’s pretty freakin’ steep. Now, maybe that doesn’t seem fair, because that’s ALL of Adobe together. Except here’s the kicker…while LightRoom and Photoshop are uber powerful, they are way more complexity than I want for my simple photography needs. InDesign for page layout might be nice, but again, overkill. Illustrator would be a nice-to-have as would Premiere for video editing. Even Acrobat Pro would come in handy from time to time. I could probably find a use for Spark, InDesign, and Audition too.

But none of them are “must-haves”, not like MS Office for instance. If Adobe dropped it to $100 a year, I’d say sign me up. At $600 a year? Yeah, no.

But I can license them separately if I find one I like, and Adobe has three products on my list — Flash, After Effects and Character Animator. While lots of people still use Flash even in 2020, it’s being phased out for website use and not generally recommended much anymore, so easily dropped.

AfterEffects is more about motion graphics in general, so not really what I want either.

Which leaves Character Animator.

1. Character Animator ($$$$$)

I downloaded ACA with their free 7 day trial and it seemed pretty powerful at first. It has some stock “puppets” to work with, including some anamorphic characters (monsters, etc.) and humans (man, woman, ninja). So some good stock characters.

I did a couple of tutorials and the interface is not particularly compelling for me. One of the features, quite common I know, is that you can use your own webcam and microphone to animate the character. So, for example, if I move my head side to side, or bob around, the characters head moves too. Equally, I can record my voice over the character and it will (in theory) lip sync to my words. Not very accurately, but a pseudo replica of my movements.

Which is okay, but not compelling to me. I closed out, checked some stuff back in email, did a couple more things, and went to go back to it. It wouldn’t load. Total crash. Okay, shut down, reboot? Nope, won’t load. I’m not sold on it, and it is more expensive than most because of the subscription model, so I’ll just uninstall it.

Nope. It insists on loading the Creative Cloud tool (CC) first, and it keeps hanging. The help page says reinstall. Why would I reinstall just to uninstall? Sigh. I eventually had to download ANOTHER uninstaller to get the first uninstaller to work. Nice.

And to be honest, this is one of the things I hate most about Adobe products. When I’ve used their Lightroom, for example, it didn’t just help me manage my files, it started doing a whole bunch of changes to folders and subfolders and meta data so that nothing else would be able to manage it either. That’s not an option I accept, particularly when I have other tools with better interfaces for some functions.

Okay, all of Adobe is definitely off the table. Too bad.

Posted in Computers | Tagged computers, review, software, website | Leave a reply

Animation software: Autodesk Maya (7), Synfig Studio (32)

The PolyBlog
November 28 2020

I’m looking for some simple but decent animation software and I have a curated list of 41 to consider. 7. Autodesk Maya ($$$$$) One technique to finding stuff that is a bit higher-quality is to look at courses that people teach on the various learning platforms. One of the “popular ones” is called Autodesk Maya, and it is both big and powerful. There are lots of professional training options out there. Why? Because the software is expensive — $1215 a YEAR on sale — and people who have that kind of cash are likely in the business and either them … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers, To Be Updated | Tagged computers, review, software, website | Leave a reply

Searching for animation software

The PolyBlog
November 28 2020

I’ve wanted the ability to create some basic animation for a project I have in mind. It isn’t revolutionary, more fun, I just would really like to be able to do some animated images, etc. The closest I could describe it is somewhere between a comic book and a comic strip. Perhaps adding a third area for a meme where this would sit between all three points or at the centre of a tri-part Venn diagram. 🙂 And since I recently upgraded my home computer for a COVID world, I’m good to go! I’ve had it on my mind for … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers, To Be Updated | Tagged computers, goals, review, software, website | Leave a reply

Today I choose to upgrade and update my software (TIC00019c)

The PolyBlog
August 9 2020

As I mentioned yesterday, I have an almost-new computer setup — not a new computer, just a lot of upgraded components, including more memory, more storage, new Windows install, new ports, etc. Faster and more efficient, and a cleaned-up install. But that clean install comes at a price. I have to rebuild everything that sits on it. Today’s focus was mainly about the apps. I had the techies install Windows fresh and clean, with no caffeine, but everything after that is on me. They could have migrated my old install but that would have defeated the purpose of the upgrade. … Continue reading →

Posted in Goals | Tagged computers, goals, software, TIC, today I choose | Leave a reply

#50by50 #29 – Make a photobook – Update

The PolyBlog
May 16 2018

A little over three weeks ago, I blogged about doing a Year-in-Review book on Shutterfly and submitting, then waiting. The book arrived, and as with a previous book by them, there are some parts that underwhelm. There are a few places where I feel like the printer colour ran a bit. Not enough in this case to send it back (I had the previous one reprinted), just enough to mildly notice. I was also looking to do a Trip Book for the family trip to B.C. back in 2010. These ones are similar in size to the Year in Review … Continue reading →

Posted in Goals | Tagged Canada, errors, layout, photobook, software, template | Leave a reply

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