TVPaint Animation Test

After years of trying and saving and failing to save enough for TVPaint, I finally was able to buy a copy with some help. Which I plan to pay back in the near future.

After spending years using Toon Boom (A great program, don't get me wrong) I am finally comfortable animating. I realised very faster that I am about 95% raster based in everything I do, about 3% 3D, 1% traditional and 1% vector.

In TVPaint, not only can I express myself better, but I have found the tools far more intuitive. I do wish there was a clipping layer, but after getting used to using masking and it's quirks, it has a lot of advantages with the way it's setup in TVPaint.

One thing that has constantly annoyed and disappointed me in Toon Boom was the lack of ease for cel shading shadows and highlights. You either had to use a lot of nodes and the "Cutter Tool" and the frequently wouldn't overlay together or if you tried to animate it on a separate layer, you couldn't see the onion skin or preview of other layers. Another thing that annoyed me was if you figured out a way, you almost always had to use the cutter tool which requires a matte, but it was incredibly difficult and fussy to set up to a full body character made up of multiple layers!

In TVPaint you can merge your layers even if they are a different type. In Toon Boom, there is NO layer merge! You have to cut and paste what you have into the layer you want and it frequently would not paste where you wanted it!

I don't regret buying Toon Boom. It was all I could afford. I learned animation and I learned vector art which was a great skill to learn since it opened up a few job opportunities in online freelancing. But, I used to get so overwhelmingly frustrated by vector animation that I would frequently quit. Or I would get so far before I encountered either a new problem or multiple problems.

I've been using the TVPaint demo on and off for years in hopes that I would one day own it. And I'm glad i did because it's kept my user skills fresh. I just simply don't have any of those issues. Plus I love to draw. I am far faster at drawing than I am at creating vector, using my mouse 98% of the time and I don't like to copy and past frames to alter like I would have to end up doing in Toon Boom to achieve smooth animation.

In TVPaint, I have found it easier to create smooth motion. The program is very responsive with a LIVE preview. In Toon Boom you can only preview one frame as a still with all effects enabled, or you have to do a temp render export which isn't always accurate to how it ACTUALLY exports. Otherwise what you see is a vector setup which actually made using the cutter tool very difficult.

All of this has always been a problem for me because I am pretty much purely raster. I tried for years to like vector art and animation when I create it. I love it when others do, it's beautiful. But for my work and using it... I absolutely detest it. And to move to TVPaint and have everything actually work and not crash and not lag and see all of my effects and shadows exactly as they would export much like if I was using Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint, is just so wonderful and reliving.

I have found effects in TVPaint that I previously had to use After Effects for and though I like AE, I hate renting it and I hate it when it crashes on export and takes two hours to render a 3 second video that I tried to make pretty.

TVPaint renders faster than any animation program I have ever used! Even faster than Clip Studio Paint but clip is much more basic. To be able to render so fast is a blessing. I'm not a professional animator by any means, so I am not worried about "saving time" which seems to be a huge selling point for Toon Boom users with the vector side of things.

I draw faster and ink and paint faster than using "time saving" vector features. I like to dive in and get to it. I like to just paint, just draw and make it happen instead of wait. I don't have the patience for vector and I get sick of problem solving. I'd much rather use my pen and tablet and not a complex series of hotkeys and mouse clicks. I just want to draw and see it come to life!

With TVPaint, I can.

I don't think I'll ever create or animate anything amazing. If anything I'll be creating some very mundane motions or animating my paintings. But one thing is for sure. I know it will make me happy and satisfy my soul, because it already has. Each work has become more and more exciting, with far less issues than all I've learned and endured with other software.

I continue to look forward to using TVPaint.

[Edit]
I just wanted to mention that despite being a Toon Boom user for roughly 5 or so years, these are only a small hand full of reasons as to why I have been recommending TVPaint each time I have been asked, what is the best software to use for animation. I admit I am biased and I try to be fair. So for now I will probably say:

For Vector Toon Boom Harmony
For Raster like me, TVPaint