Toon Boom Storyboard Pro....What's an Animatic?

interface of Toon Boom Storyboard Pro

I suppose the first question I should address before going on about animatics is, what is an animatic? Think of an animatic as a multimedia storyboard, a series of images placed together to relay a story or idea enhanced with movement, sound and/or footnotes. Before devoting the time and effort to create an animated story, commercial or media presentation, the smart approach is to plan it out. You can waste a lot of time and effort creating a fully finished piece only to have to ripped apart by editors, producers and clients, then it's back to square one on your project. By conveying the flow of your project through still image usage, you save time and give everyone an idea where you're headed, artistically. Often this can be a stumbling block as well-a lot of individuals out there aren't visionaries and may find it difficult or down-right impossible to perceive your story through still images. So there you are left trying to describe some 'cool move to the left while the first guy jumps in the sir, then the second guy sees him and starts-'...the glazed eyes of those listening tell you the point isn't quite driving home. So what's the happy medium point between finished animation and sketches, workload, effort, project perception? The answer is, the animatic.
The animatic helps bridge the gap of understanding movement and storyline flow of a project and to date I have found that one of the best pieces of software out there to create animatics is Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, created by the sane company that gave us Toon Boom Studio. TBSP is a scaled down version of Toon Boom Studio but gives you just enough tools to make fantastic presentations that you can distribute as a document (PDF) to be printed in a professional looking format (just like the big studios....nice) or in an electronic format to be viewed as a Quicktime movie, which adds the effects of sound and/or motion. The interface is quite easy to learn and use and will have you creating presentations in no time. Tools include tablet/mouse sensitive pen, eraser, color palette-most the basic tools you'll find in any basic paint program, but added is the movement ability to rotate, scale and move elements within your project and time/sync them in accordance to your story flow. Side notes can be added for additional help in understanding your piece, onion skinning capabilities to help you with animation and layers to provide you ease of project element organization. Toon Boom offers a limited time trial offer of their software which is always nice to try before you buy and if you feel you need a good followup program for finished, full animation presentations, Toon Boom Studio is an excellent choice-check both of these programs out at their website.

Incomedia Website X5

Most posts on this blog have been favorable to the software reviewed, however I feel it my duty every now and then to point out those packages I feel are not quite up to being as user-friendly or usable in the graphics world as one (or one's company) might lead you to believe.  Inconmedia Website X5 lured me in with the promise of being the 'all in one solution packed with tools to create and publish professional websites, online shops and blogs'. I have my share of programs and small utilities to help me streamline the creation of websites but also keep on the lookout for any new and improved (or equally usable) progs to do this task. Most people are familiar with or have heard about Adobe Dreamweaver and quite a few have heard of some WYSIWYG web software out there that promises making websites a cinch. Website X5 called out for me to put it to the test and right from the word go, they left me unimpressed.
I will admit that they do have all the editing tools needed to make a site, editing tools to create or modify images for your website, Flash support, shopping cart capabilities, but where it lacks is in the freedom to create outside the box. You are instructed from the beginning to start a new project by providing a valid URL for your site (what if I'm just in the planning stage or haven't yet registered a domain?) and then you choose from a plethora of pre-made templates (I hate templates!) that will serve as the boundaries for your page. This limitation stifles someone from the word go and forces them to fit the design around the software rather than the other way around, as it should be.
So to be fair, I suppose if you have no problems being led around by the nose when it comes to designing a webpage, then Website X5 will work for you, but to be honest, if you want a cookie cutter approach to a website design you might a well just save the money and go online to a host like Wix or some other make-your-own site that will walk you through setting up a fully functional webpage that corrals your creativity within the boundaries of their criteria.