It’s funny you say that; I quickly jumped into an old project in TBS and was reminded of its limited functionality and “small” feel, and also despite smaller file sizes, it couldn’t seem to preview animations at full framerates, which I thought was funny.
It’s a good point, Zeb.
Hi there,
So I am about to embark on the part of my project where actually animating of each shot will occur. This is my first project to be working on alone, and I was curious, with Animate, do folks typically put an entire piece into one Animate file? Or do you create scenes separately for file size’s sake?
What is your preferred method and what would you recommend?
Absolutely without a doubt, make separate scenes and then composite them together in something like Sony Vegas. When I first started doing animation for some reason I thought my video had to be all done in one file–Title, credits, scene transitions, The End–the whole works! It was a nightmare!
It is so much easier to do it a scene at a time, and then put it all together where you can add additional effects, tweak the timing and so on. Just like a movie is shot with various scenes and footage and then assembled in the editing room, so an animation can be best done in this manner as well.
At least that’s my two cents on the subject.
If you are doing a really short animation you can do it in one, otherwise split it up as suggested.
Animate is designed to work one scene at a time (thus no scene manager like studio).
So if you had a shot that lasted about 7 seconds, and then transitioned to a completely different background, would you separate those by background or by a certain number of frames/time?
For discrete scenes I nearly always put them in separate files unless I am mashing them together in some way.
Check out Lilly’s thread in the tips and tricks on managing scenes
Thanks for this
That was an interesting read, it was good to get a sense of why they chose not to continue using a scene manager in Animate. I would agree with what coreyart said that it’s a frustration not having the option available to you, especially being an individual animator. I can’t help but wonder whether it wouldn’t be advantageous for me to wipe the digital dust off of TBS for shorter projects…
That being said, does anyone working on a Mac use iMovie software in order to collect their projects? It would fall in the “free” category Lilly described, and I like that
The only thing I’ve ever noticed with that software was Interlaced “Combing” effect with some HD content.
Thoughts?
Eric, I’m on a PC so I don’t know about iMovie and all. But I would say regarding “dusting off your TBS” that once you get going with Animate or Animate Pro, or Harmony for that matter, you get accustomed to the better features and greater number of features that the higher end software has to offer.
I started learning animation with TBS and did all of my early work with it and enjoyed having all the scenes in one file. At the same time it was like working in a confined space. Once I upgraded I missed that one feature but appreciated the many features I now had access to. Once you get over the feeling of loss and your old workflow, you soon get in the groove with the new workflow and you forget the past.
Been there, done that. Just note that iMovie is not exactly professional editing software; it does do the job, however.
Finally, understand that animating and editing are two different things, usually done by different peope at different times. Editors don’t know about animation, don’t want to know about it, and definitely don’t want to be bothered with huge file structures with layers and whatever. Animators produce scenes, editors crank out movies…