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Posted January 22, 2013 by Dan Spiler in PC
 
 

Anime Studio Review

Anime Studio Featured Image
Anime Studio Featured Image

Anime Studio is a 2D animation program that focuses on speeding up asset creation and putting the focus on animation. It’s made by the same company that makes Poser, a 3D asset creation tool. You’ve probably never heard of it, because generally Poser and it’s kind are generally considered “inferior” to the industry standard stuff, like 3DS Max, or in our case of 2D animation, Flash. Imagine my surprise when I cracked open Anime Studio to find something that wasn’t half bad.

Anime Studio Review

Anime Studio is very user friendly; not only are the tools very simple to use and understand, but the tutorial is up front and readily presented upon opening the program. It also comes in a PDF, so it’s accessible at any time. It very quickly and clearly teaches 2D animation fundamentals far better than Flash, to the point where I had a fully functioning lip-synced animation in less than 5 minutes, without having to create much original content. There are also tools there to help create original content if you aren’t an artist (like me). These drawing and animation tools are simple; one of my favorites is the Character Wizard, which made creating faces and characters a breeze. You can set parameters like facial and body proportions, and tweak them in a live preview of your character. You can also save your work as a preset, in case you want to use that character as the base for another one. Another  favorite tool was the Lip-syncing tool, which guides you to automatically sync your animation to a piece of audio. It’s extremely easy to use, and makes for excellent animations. It’s as simple as bringing in an audio file, attaching it to a character who has a series of open/closed layers for the mouth, and then letting the program do all the work.

 Anime Studio Review

Unfortunately, Anime Studio only exports animations as swf or avi files, which is limiting depending on the work you’re doing. If you’re integrating it with Flash or a game, it shouldn’t a problem; the issue arises when you start to expand the scope of where your animations will end up. This is alleviated somewhat by the convenient “Upload to Youtube/Facebook” options, but it’s still a downer. It also doesn’t accept mp3 files for the lip-syncing, which is a big problem; mp3 is a fairly universal format for consumer audio, so it’ll take some converting to the acceptable wav format to be able to use your audio for lip-syncing in Anime Studio. Keep in mind that I’m using the Debut, not Pro, version; even still, it’s a pretty limiting thing to have on a $50 piece of software.

 Anime Studio Review

For a 2D animation pipeline alone, I find Anime Studio is better than Flash. It’s more user-friendly, has tons of options, vector-based drawing tools, and it has the lip-syncing tool. It’s a combination of the animation tools from Flash and After Effects in one program. It’s definitely something I would recommend to 2D animators looking for an easier, more efficient way to handle their animation. It also exports into common filetypes, so your work in Anime Studio can integrate with Flash, Photoshop and the like. If you’re looking to do 2D animation, Anime Studio is definitely a solid option. That said, the biggest issue is that it’s not an industry standard like Adobe products are, and it’s because the brand isn’t familiar. Game and Animation schools aren’t using it like they use Flash or other programs; Smith Micro should get their stuff in the hands of students who’ll be entering these creative industries. Their stuff is good enough to be used in these schools, or even in Game Jams (Global Game Jam would be an excellent foot in the door).

As it is, Anime Studio would be a great, cost-effective alternative for indie-developers, 2D Animators, or smaller animation or game development studios to use; it has a few odd limitations in the Debut version, which makes the price tag a little hard to swallow. From a professional standpoint, it needs to be tweaked a little more with the exporting and importing capabilities, because that will slow down workflow, and because it integrates animation and art creation, pipelines can be shorter and workflow can be smoother and faster otherwise. It’s something to keep it mind, and given the ever-growing variety of asset creation tools that are cheap or free, it’s kind of a crapshoot choosing Anime Studio over something else. It might be more user-friendly and easier to use, but that matters so little once you start creating stuff and needing it in a greater variety of formats. Google will probably come out with something as good, if not better soon. In the meantime though, Flash is better overall if you have the money (because of the added programming tools). I can’t honestly recommend Anime Studio given how much else is out there that does everything so much better or offers so much more. It’s not inherently a bad product, but it’s so limited for the price.


Dan Spiler