Hello,

For some time, I've been looking for an animation program that uses pixels as opposed to vectors (i.e., Flash) and also supports layers and alpha transparency. I'm planning on making sprites for a 2D game I'm working on, but I want to add various effects to them (shadows, glowing magic effects) that would be easiest to do with a program like this. I envision it as something like a merging of Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop.

I've experimented with many free programs -- Cylekx seemed promising at first, but it turned out to be a lot more cumbersome than i had anticipated, and Dogwaffle looks good as well, even though it's surprisingly difficult to import and export the image formats I'm planning to use with it.

I thought I'd ask if anyone has found a good example of this kind of program, or knows of any good places I could search for one. (For the record, I do have Flash, but it's difficult to work with pixels in Flash, and I'd really prefer a simpler [and less expensive] alternative.)

Thanks in advance!

Project Dogwaffle comes to mind, if on Windows. www.dogwaffle.info

PD Pro 5 just released a few weeks ago, still on launch promo till end of October (Halloween, where prices go scary high)

There are others, you could find some at thebest3d.com (same as dogwaffle.info)

Some are free, some are very good, a few are both.

What do you need , something for very small sprites?  Below 31 pixels across?

Dogwaffle is better for mid and large sizes.

I mentioned Dogwaffle in my initial post. I've played with the free version and a trial of a newer version per your suggestion, but I couldn't seem to find any simple way to create an animation with layers. The closest thing I could find was the alpha composite feature, but I kept running into error messages whenever I tried merging two BMP sequences. Dogwaffle is a nice program, but I don't think it's what I'm looking for in this particular case.

I'll try looking around on thebest3d.com to see if there's anything promising there. (And to answer your question, my sprites are definitely going to be considerably larger than 30 pixels across.)

if you need full layered animation that's beyond a simple animation program. Try tvPaint, or ToonBoom or Pencil... there's a bunch more, some more raster oriented, some more vector, like AnimeStudio, some are a mix of both.

http://www.thebest3d.com/animationsoftware/

Dogwaffle can do animations but you're right, not animated layers (and neither opaque layers). It's a paint program first. But you can also achive lots through the custom brush, including to keyframe a path and transform of a brush to be rendered across an animation. The brush can itself be a animbrush, i.e. carry a image sequence or something coming from a video. You can paint with video on video.

Many tutorials will show examples at www.thebest3d.com/pdpro - lots of postwork examples. keying (blue screen/green screen) of poser walk sequences, etc.

But granted, it's not a replacement for After Effects ;-)   at least not for a bunch of things.

Back in the days of Amiga, D-paint (DeluxePaint) was a great little proggy, which inspired Dogwaffle. Another program, more for video and animation, has probably inspired tvpaint. Or perhaps that one started there as such, I don't remember, mix them all up in this old brain (no wonder they call it grey matter,... not much left there in distinct shapes and colors LOL... I now call it the cyborg's alternative to RAM (Rand Access memory) and ROM (Read-Only memory), it is FOM: Forget-Only Memory

oh, and there's one more which may just be what you're looking for, and we actually like it and use it in making icons for Dogwaffle. It is called Cosmigo Pro
Look for it at http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php

Pro Motion by Cosmigo also has a number of features found in Dogwaffle such as Swap buffer. Similar shortcuts for accessing some of these features that were seen 25 years ago in Dpaint and I think you'll like it.

Thank you very much for all the info.

I tried Pencil, and I think it might be just what I'm looking for. Even though the latest version is still in the beta stage, it allows gif and png sequences to be imported and exported and allows layered animations as well. Unless I come across a better program, I think I'll stick with Pencil for the time being (I mean, it's free -- how can I say "no" to that?).

Thanks again, staigermanus!

There was a time such programs were readily available and I could name a dozen. Unfortunately, now, most of what i could name is no longer available.  Newtek used to make Aura (a nice little animation/video FX program), Pinnacle Systems used to have a program for this exact thing - though I forget the name, and as was mentioned there used to be a program known as Deluxe Paint (mostly Amiga, but it was also available on PC).  One way to do it, and an effective way that is overlooked, is actually using a combination of Photoshop and After Effects.  By using Layers in Photoshop you almost have an in-built light table, and it allows for a wide variety of special effects with hand drawn style animation; you just need to be sure to save each image  witha numericcly increasing filename (i.e. Animation001.jpg, Animation002.jpg, Animation003.jpg, etc...).  You can import PSD or JPG sequences with such numerical filenames directly into After Effects as a video clip, for compiling, compositing, or additional post-work.  Also, After Effects has an option when importing layered PSDs to import either as one image, or seperate them into different images - allowing for some truly unique effects with some planning.

Also, Gimp offers a variation known as GimpShop, which makes use of photoship filters and file formats, though last time I tried it there were some stability issues (this was years ago).

Hope this information is inspiring and helpful.

Also some of these software packages look as if they might be what you seek:

PM Animation

Beneton Movie Gif

Ulead Gif Animator

Digicel Flipbook 6

I could link to some useful reviews and such, but I am unsure how the admin feel about links in forum threads that may seem commercial.

PD Pro 5.1 was just released, with new features for animators, and also the Frame Painter tool was released as a free plugin to earlier PD users. www.dogwaffle.info/dogwaffle/whatsnew/5.1

If you can afford After Effects, that's a pretty powerful too. I use it too.

I also use and explore (and like) Anime Studio, quite impressive too. (aka Moho)

-Philip

PS: here are some new Cowboy SHorts made with the new Frame Painter and Exposure sheet with audio recorder.

http://www.dogwaffle.info/pdpro5/tutorials/5.1Cowboy/cowboy_shorts_collection.html

The OP already expressed some concerns with Project Dogwaffle not being suitable for their needs.  I think they are seeking something that is more of a specific frame animation tool, with easier import/export than PD supports.  I must admit, I too had some frustrations when I attempted to use PD.  Anime Studio Pro is not bad, but is also Vector Based, unless using it to import frames created in another program - in this respect it makes an economical substitute for AE if you only mainly need a compositor.

Oh how I miss Deluxepaint IV and Image FX on the Amiga - those were perfect for this sort of thing.

While I do appreciate the new suggestions, I think there has been some confusion as to exactly what sort of animation program I'm looking for. I decided that the best way to explain myself further would be with this little picture that I've attached above.

The picture is a transparent PNG, with the pixellized figure on one layer, while the fuzzy, glowing orb in his hand is on another layer. What I'm looking for is a program that enabled me to create something like this (pixel-based images on two or more seperate, transparent layers), then animate it in the same program -- something like Flash only using pixels instead of vectors and none of the extra tools like ActionScript. So far, I've found programs that have layers but are only capable of importing pixellized art, and programs that allow the creation of pixel art but have very limited sets of tools. ULEAD GIF animator looks promising, though like Pencil, there are still one or two areas where I find it a little bit lacking.

I thought that something like a simple combination of Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop Pro would exist in one form or another, but so far, none of the programs I've tried have been quite like this. I may have to just fall back on the tried-and-true (yet somewhat tedious) method of copying merged frames from PSP to ASP one by one and hoping the animation looks smooth when it's played, since I'm starting to feel that I may not find another option.

Still, thanks again for the tips, everyone.

Animestudio/MoHo can texture a rectangle or square, as far as I know, you could work with your raster images as textures mapped on rectangles. The IK and bones are second to none.

The output can be avi, quicktime, flash .swf and image sequences in various popular formats.

-Philip

I've experimented with Anime Studio before, and I really don't think it's what I'm looking for. The learning curve for it seems very steep, and though it makes animating very easy in some areas, it does have its limits. The amount of effort required to do something as simple as turning a character's head makes doing such an action the old-fashioned way much more inviting, at least for me.

There also doesn't seem to be any way of editing raster images once they've been imported into Anime Studio (e.g., changing the color of a part of the image, changing the shape of it, etc.).