Review: MotionArtist lets artists become animators without learning code

MotionArtist 1.0 generates interactive HTML 5 video presentation of comics and more.  This full release offers more customization of animation files, tighter recording controls, and better asset editing compared to the July 2012 beta. MotionArtist ($60, buy-only) makes animating images and text relatively easy for comic artists and web designers with imported files. Unlike with Flash, you can't draw in the program and then animate their creations. The focus is on animating existing image files from other sources.

Artwork by Karen LukThe blue line with dots represents an animation path. Under Project Settings, MotionArtist offers common video dimension sizes.

MotionArtist opens to a default project designed by Smith Micro, showcasing various animation techniques. However, comic artists unfamiliar with using an animation program or film terms might find all the controls tricky to animate their comic pages. Imported PSD files maintain their layers for animation or the user can composite the layers into a single layer. JPG, PNG and MotionArtist vendor Smith Micro's Anime Studio are other supported file types.

MotionArtist has three different views: Director, Camera and Panel. Animators will recognize the toolbar and scene list, and the timeline setup with its default of 30 frames per second. Thanks to GPU acceleration, users can play working files back in real time, which assists in editing the video. In addition to using your own video, you can animate panels, text and speech balloons with various effects in MotionArtist.

Comic artists can use difference scenes to cut between comic panels or pages. For example in film, opening credits can be the first scene, followed by the next one of the characters walking into camera view. In comics, it can be moving from one panel to the next or page to page. MotionArtist is set up for multiple scenes, so comic artists can animate individual pages or panels and then cut them together for a single presentation.

Artwork by Karen LukAfter exporting the HTML 5 video to its own index page, web designers can modify the CSS or JavaScript.

The rub is getting familiar with MotionArtist to maximize the effects of a motion comic. A comic artist may have many layers of their comic art and have to merge them into different layers for animation output. Separate layers for each character, sound effects, backgrounds and so on in order to animate them individually. For more painterly comic pages, MotionArtist offers camera tilt, zoom and a parallax effect to create interest in moving from panel to panel.

Typical film scene transitions like Fade to Black and Iris Wipes are listed in the scene list tool bar. Artists can make buttons to either “turn the page” or use the animation scene transitions to continue the story. You can add sound to any to scene, too. MotionArtist has pre-loaded background templates for the exported video. Once the animation is exported as HTML 5 file, web designers can view source code in their browser to edit the CSS or JavaScript. Users can also upload an AVI file directly to YouTube and Facebook. MotionArtist allows the comic artist to control the motion comic’s presentation, right down to the second and specify the size of the presentation for HDTV 1080p or an iPad.

MotionArtist 1.0 offers more animation control and options than its beta release. Web designers can use the program to generate quick loading, interactive graphics without Flash and ready to go for HTML 5. Comic artists willing to learn basic animation techniques and spend some time using MotionArtist will be rewarded with creating their own motion comics without learning lots of code.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Karen Luk is a freelance illustrator and art instructor who creates comics. Her work has been featured at the Cartoon Art Museum and Google. Recently, she successfully funded her upcoming Steampunk ABC children's book on Kickstarter.
More by Karen Luk

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Review: MotionArtist lets artists become animators without learning code

Motion Artist 1.0 generates interactive HTML 5 video presentation of comics and more.  This full release offers more customization of animation files, tighter recording controls, and better asset editing compared to the July 2012 beta. Motion Artist ($60, buy-only) makes animating images and text relatively easy for comic artists and web designers with imported files. Unlike with Flash, you can't draw in the program and then animate their creations. The focus is on animating existing image files from other sources.

Artwork by Karen LukThe blue line with dots represents an animation path. Under Project Settings, Motion Artist offers common video dimension sizes.

Motion Artist opens to a default project designed by Smith Micro, showcasing various animation techniques. However, comic artists unfamiliar with using an animation program or film terms might find all the controls tricky to animate their comic pages. Imported PSD files maintain their layers for animation or the user can composite the layers into a single layer. JPG, PNG and Motion Artist vendor Smith Micro's Anime Studio are other supported file types.

Motion Artist has three different views: Director, Camera and Panel. Animators will recognize the toolbar and scene list, and the timeline setup with its default of 30 frames per second. Thanks to GPU acceleration, users can play working files back in real time, which assists in editing the video. In addition to using your own video, you can animate panels, text and speech balloons with various effects in Motion Artist.

Comic artists can use difference scenes to cut between comic panels or pages. For example in film, opening credits can be the first scene, followed by the next one of the characters walking into camera view. In comics, it can be moving from one panel to the next or page to page. Motion Artist is set up for multiple scenes, so comic artists can animate individual pages or panels and then cut them together for a single presentation.

Artwork by Karen LukAfter exporting the HTML 5 video to its own index page, web designers can modify the CSS or JavaScript.

The rub is getting familiar with Motion Artist to maximize the effects of a motion comic. A comic artist may have many layers of their comic art and have to merge them into different layers for animation output. Separate layers for each character, sound effects, backgrounds and so on in order to animate them individually. For more painterly comic pages, Motion Artist offers camera tilt, zoom and a parallax effect to create interest in moving from panel to panel.

Typical film scene transitions like Fade to Black and Iris Wipes are listed in the scene list tool bar. Artists can make buttons to either “turn the page” or use the animation scene transitions to continue the story. You can add sound to any to scene, too. Motion Artist has pre-loaded background templates for the exported video. Once the animation is exported as HTML 5 file, web designers can view source code in their browser to edit the CSS or JavaScript. Users can also upload an AVI file directly to YouTube and Facebook. Motion Artist allows the comic artist to control the motion comic’s presentation, right down to the second and specify the size of the presentation for HDTV 1080p or an iPad.

Motion Artist 1.0 offers more animation control and options than its beta release. Web designers can use the program to generate quick loading, interactive graphics without Flash and ready to go for HTML 5. Comic artists willing to learn basic animation techniques and spend some time using Motion Artist will be rewarded with creating their own motion comics without learning lots of code.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Karen Luk is a freelance illustrator and art instructor who creates comics. Her work has been featured at the Cartoon Art Museum and Google. Recently, she successfully funded her upcoming Steampunk ABC children's book on Kickstarter.
More by Karen Luk

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

10 Tips to Become a Siri Power User

Siri was formerly an application available for all iPhones, but now the application is exclusively on iPhone 4S. This virtual personal assistant is a main selling point for Apple’s latest smartphone. However, many users don’t know the full extent of Siri’s capabilities.

Here are 10 functional tips for making Siri work for you.

A night out with friends can be made a lot easier with Siri. You can ask her, “Any good restaurants in the area?” Siri will offer you a list of the closest restaurants. You can be more specific by adding cuisines.

Expecting a chill in the air? Ask Siri, “Do I need a coat?” just to make sure. She will tell you that night’s temperature.

As you leave home for dinner, you remember that there’s a big game downtown. Ask Siri, “How’s the traffic?” and she’ll direct you to Google Maps Traffic.

It’s time to split the bill. Siri knows the sales tax and everything; all you need to say is, “What is [percentage] tip of [price] split by [how many] people?” Siri will handle the rest.

At the end of the night, you notice you’ve had one too many and need a taxi to pick you up. Be frank with Siri and tell her, “I’ve had too much to drink.” She will recommend calling a taxi using your location.

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How Jailbreaking Your Smartphone Could Become Illegal

Don’t like the way your smartphone works? Maybe you want more control arranging the app icons on your iPhone. Or you want to get rid of the obscure airG Chat social network app that Virgin Mobile installs on your Google Android phone and won’t let you remove.

Today, you’re free to hack around those restrictions. And you don’t always need to be a tech whiz. With some iPhones, for example, you have been able to visit the website jailbreakme.com with your phone’s browser and just press a button. After that, it’s “jailbroken,” and you can install apps from anywhere, not just Apple’s App Store.

These changes aren’t always purely for fun. Some deaf people have hacked Android phones, for example, to allow them to make video calls using a sign-language interpreting service called SVRS.

But soon, all that could be illegal if jailbreaking is ruled to be copyright violation. Today is the last day that the U.S. Copyright Office is accepting input on whether it should continue allowing you to jailbreak your phone. Technically, doing so could violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, a strict law against “circumvention of technological measures applied to copyrighted works.”

Software is considered to be copyrighted work, so jailbreaking your phone by changing its software could be considered “circumvention.” The penalties, at least on paper, can be severe — up to $25,000 – though it’s unlikely to go that far. “I’d say people will be more at risk of getting threatening letters from lawyers,” said Mitch Stoltz, staff attorney at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF.

Cellphone tinkerers got a reprieve in July 2010 when the U.S. Copyright Office agreed – based on input from EFF — to exempt mobile devices from the DMCA. But the exemption is temporary, and will expire later this year if the government decides not to renew it.

Even now, it applies to only “wireless telephone handsets.” It doesn’t mention iPads and other tablets, though they often run the same software as the phones. It certainly doesn’t cover other gadgets such as game consoles. In fact, Sony sued a man named George Hotz in 2011 for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3 to run additional software and for offering downloads on his website that would enable other people to do the same.

(We asked Sony on Wednesday and Thursday to comment, but they were unable to reply in time for publication. The same happened with Apple and Google.)

For that reason, EFF is asking not only for extension of the phone exemption, but also for protection for hacking tablets and game consoles. Stoltz is upbeat. “We’re pretty confident that we’ve shown that there are a lot of legal and valid reasons for jailbreaking devices,” he said.

Other groups are going further. The Free Software Foundation will ask the copyright office to exempt essentially every electronic device. Brett Smith, their license compliance engineer, was finishing the organization’s comments to the Copyright Office as we spoke to him on Thursday night. “We’ll support an exemption for as much jailbreaking as we can get,” he said. Smith declined to provide a list that would limit what they wanted covered, but he said “yes” to every item we asked about, including game consoles, tablets, PCs, PC software, home automation devices, robotic toys and TVs. Then he added home network routers and modems.

Aaron Williamson, a staff attorney at the Software Freedom Law Center, said his organization is also pushing for broad exemptions. “If you buy anything — whether that’s a phone or a computer or a tablet or a toaster — you have the right to control the software running on that device and have it do what you want it to do,” he said.

Article provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to Laptopmag.com.

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