I'm sorry-ish.

Yesterday I reported that I didn’t like the animation software that I was trying out, but I take it back.  For $60, I can overlook the kiddie packaging (well, it is marketed as children’s software) and the fact that it saves your files without revealing the extensions – as if such things are not important.  I am having a devil of a time figuring out how to save the files in anything usable outside of the particular software, but that could just be me and my preference to recreate the wheel in Word or Photoshop, rather than use new programs which make wheel recreation unnecessary but learning new particulars a requirement.  

I do like the way this loosely rendered picture of my daughter came out. While it's not animated and I could have easily created it in Photoshop, I never gave such a drawing a thought until I tried out Animation-ish.  (The watercolor-like background I did create in Photoshop).

The entire “-ish” thing is the idea that in animation, drawing doesn’t need to be perfect, just sort of good-ish.  At first I didn’t like that idea, but of course, with beginner animation (not high-tech CGI-Pixar stuff), it’s not only okay, it can be encouraging.  

The color palette and fill controls are extremely limited, but I guess I’ll play with it the whole two weeks before I pronounce judgment on it again.

In the meantime, I’ll keep experimenting with it in order to determine if I can master the power of the $60 program before determining if I should move onto the $180 Toon Boom Studio (for a two week test drive), or if this kids program is the end of the road for my animation experiments.