Yesterday I was one of 200 lucky people that was selected for a web seminar to see a demo of the software before its release date. All I can say is Wow!!! Smith Micro has raised the bar again. I can’t wait to upgrade next Wednesday. You can check out some of the new features of Anime Studio Pro 8 here.

When it comes to making Cartoons these days there’s a wide range of software packages to choose from and some of them do things better than others. In my last blog post I said Anime Studio Pro was ahead of the game when it came to 2D character animation, so let me explain a little better what I’m talking about. I personally own and use the latest versions of Adobe Flash, Toon Boon Animate Pro and Anime Studio Pro which are some of the more popular apps on the market. Flash and Toon Boom Animate are the standard in the industry and you’ll need to know them if you want a job in the field, but are they really the best of the best? If you’re an old school traditional 2D animator I think you’ll be happy with them, but if you’re one of the new cutting edge digital animators in the world, well I think you’re going to eventually want to try something that offers you a little more. Don’t get me wrong Flash and Toon Boom Animate take traditional Frame by Frame and Cut-Out style animation to a whole other level and I enjoy using them, but Anime Studio I think is ahead of the pack in some areas. Anime Studio tackles 2D animation a little differently than other apps. It uses more of a 3D approach to create 2D animation. It uses things like Morph Targets, Physics Simulation, Particles, and Motion tracking, etc. Once you realize Anime Studio has the ability to control and animate the individual points of a vector object, then things like Shape Hints that you have in the other apps quickly become a nuisance and your eyes will open up to a whole new world of animation possibilities.

Just my opinion!