Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

This may be a stupid question - but is TVP offering any upgrade discounts for people who just (May 13th) bought version 8.5?

-Cathy

Everyone in France is celebrating a holiday today, but I do remember that there was a break for people who bought '8.5 after May 1st, although I think it was a time limited offer -- my guess: something like two weeks. I think it might have run out by now, but not sure. You should be able to find it through search, though I don't know which words to use. Perhaps try May 1st....

Here's something I found:

It says:
Great news for new customers!
Everyone who have bought a full version of TVP Animation 8 between June 1st 2008 and June 23rd 2008 can upgrade to TVP Animation 9 for free. Please contact us for more informations at store[at]tvpaint[dot]fr.

Thanks Paul ... since I got mine in May it looks like I may not be eligible for the freebie. Sheesh! I should have waited another month to buy it! HA!

Are you planning on updating right away or waiting this one out? There is lots of stuff for you to do with what you have in your hands at the moment, before you'll even know that some things could be done in an easier way. We made most of our feature film on the old Mirage and upgrading to 8.5 and then 9 has been very nice but it has not changed the look of our film -- just made the work flow smoother and more pleasant. It's like switching to a newer model of the same car; the paint is shinier and the seats smell new but no one around you has noticed anything different about you.

Yes - I'm happy with 8.6 and certainly have a lot to explore as it is, so I'm fine with not upgrading.

I'll give you a warning though -- as soon as you'll get into animation with all earnestness you will start finding out what others are using that you don't have, and some of those features in 9 are hard to resist... you might find yourself upgrading sooner than you think, because as a few around here have already said, the upgrade is worth the price. How are you coming along with your experiments? Anything to show us?

Nothing to show you just yet. I am still working on my rabbit and using it as a base model to define how I want my colors to look, ect. I'm definitely leaning toward a more painterly 'Beatrix Potter' look but need to constantly curb my need to "decorate" everything with too much detail. Darn day job is taking-up too much time and energy these days. I like the money but resent not having studio play time. ( I'm writing this from work actually - boss is out today - hehehe - when the cat's away ... the mice will go online!)

I suspect you are spending too much time with character design and not enough time drawing motion. When there is need for a very complex character, many of us sketch out the poses first and hang the decorations on the tree later. When you do the opposite you'll get frustrated trying to figure out the maze of lines between two poses. Starting with a complex character can set you up for failure.

You hit that nail right on the head!

This is why (when teaching students) I put so much emphasis on design through motion. All the animation textbooks and particularly those based on the old Disney paradigm, spend too much time on character design before there is any mention of putting figures into motion. Don't car engineers first design the engine and the chassis before the body designers get their hands on it?

I've seen industrial class instructors teach students how to design the shape of an appliance before anything is discussed about what goes inside. It makes no sense to spend time on the detail looks of a character before you even decide how it's going to move about.

I've also seen in school after school character design taught as one, self-contained class, usually before anything else is taught, and only later animation is taught in another self-contained class.

If you start drawing a little rabbit in a skirt and hat before you have any inkling of how it's going to walk on its hind legs, how do you know how long the skirt should be? But if you've sketched a sort of naked rabbit make a few steps, scrubbed these roughs back and forth to see the nature of its stride, then you can already begin to see the outline of the skirt in this motion and you sketch your first lines of the skirt around those legs.

Both elements go into character design together; animation and character; first in rough outlines, then, much later, after you've put the rough lady rabbit through a lot of movements, do you decorate her -- and I bet she'll have a lot less hanging on her than when you drew her first like a book illustration.

If you draw the skirt first and then start sketching its walk, you will tend not to deal with its legs at all because no one will ever see them and why waste time on something no one can see? True, but the random way you put its shoes down is most likely not going to come off as good animation at all because the missing construction will show in many awkward ways; most likely the walk will be very wooden, very stiff, and very uninteresting to watch.