June 16, 2006
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… Because you all keep asking us about Nacho Libre, check these out:-Boston.com’s article on Lucha Libre’s mass appeal (which includes an interview with our Los Campeones writer – Keith Rainville ) And also this not-too- promising review on Slate.com. Hmmm. Is it another Napoleon Dynamite with “Mexicans”? Yes, I am going to put aside my cynical reservations, see the movie this weekend and decide…
Los Campeones de La Lucha Libre © Fwak! – click to turn
Going Solo?
Tonight was our final training class on Toonboom Solo, a vector animation program that surpasses Flash in many ways, bringing back more sophisticated elements of traditional animation programs (eg, Animo 10 years ago) — Character Color Palettes, X-Sheets, Compositing “Node” controls etc. (Toonboom Harmony is the networkable version, with shared libraries)
We were particularly impressed with the Drawing capabilities (eg, brush strokes are easier to do, they stay consistent and don’t automatically merge/flatten as they do in Flash), and the 3D Camera feature!
2D drawings in 3D space – Click here to see it in action
Then there is the trippy stuff like Morphing (a much more sophisticated version “shape tweening”, to use Flash lingo, but with contour hints that actually work) and Inverse Kinematics where 2D drawings can be manipulated (via joints) as though they were 3D puppets.No doubt numerous Flash plug-ins already exist to enable features like “rigging”. “camera” and “special effects”, but we find it impressive that Solo/Harmony covers tons of animation features, all in one standalone program.
A big thank you to both Francisco of Toonboom for the training, and to Joel at Film Roman/IDT for setting this up. Can’t wait to receive our free copies of the software to experiment with! It will be interesting to test the compatability between Solo and Flash to see how well the two programs talk to each other…
Related Link: Toonboom Harmony Discussion (@ Cold Hard Flash)
Update: Final day class Photo! (taken by Joel)
Other news: We have now registered FWAK! ANIMATION USA. I guess this makes us an International company. And YAY! Both our greencard applications have been approved.
