> As a background, I produce animation for corporate training and educational purposes, lead a team of two people as a creative director for a fortune 500 company where we produce a lot of animation and freelance for more "fun" projects next to all that like i.e. a credited brief stint as an animator on an adult swim show.
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> I've worked with After Effects, Flash (now Animate), Moho Pro and, my favorite, Toon Boom Harmony Premium.
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> There is absolutely NO WAY that i would use Construct for animation over any of the above mentioned software packages, which have literally decades of development behind them and were very carefully catered for animators and suits all their needs.
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> When it comes to producing HTML5 animation for the web, i'd either go with Animate CC, which i rarely use these days but it comes with our company wide CC subscription OR, would look into Rive.App, which was recommended to me by my colleagues and seems to be a really robust piece of software that is very similar to tools found in the above mentioned packages.
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> I maybe used the Construct timeline once or twice in my projects since i found it to be extremely confusing and non-intuitive. If i have to think longer than 30 seconds about how a timeline works, there's really something wrong, sorry, but by now after using so many timelines, this is just something so standardized, that it should work in a more standardized way. Beside that, in my experience the timeline used to crash a lot. I don't know how it is these days, it might be better.
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> Construct's animation features are just very clearly developed with neither a clear understanding of animation workflows nor any sort of input from professional animators and it shows. The interactivity might be nice but it's probably already a total overkill for most animators, who definitely won't spend the time learning the ins and outs of the event sheets. As intuitive as they are, they still need time to learn. Compared to something like Rive or all your usual prototyping tools like Figma or Invision, which can export HTML 5 and offer easy(er) to use interactivity features as well, it's really not all that intuitive as you might think.
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> I just hope they didn't bite off more than they can chew and hope they really go in and look at whats out there and what the people they want to sell this to actually need. Which also brings me to this: WHO is this for exactly? WHAT animators? Motion Graphics people who work for video? Definitely won't use it, and one video export option with a file format that is highly compressed won't change that either (usually you animate either directly in the compositing software or export image sequences and then go to compositing or some ProRes or other video format with less noticable compression).
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> Character animators, game animators, UI designers, etc. etc. there is really no clear indication, who they want to develop this for...
This. It doesn't seem anyone who animates for a living was actually spoken to, and the way timeline animation works here and in C3 is the very definition of counterintuitive compared to every other piece of animation software I can think of.
Seconded! I use or have used most animation apps in my career: Moho Pro, Toonboom, Krita, TV Paint, OpenToonz, After Effects, Spine, Flash/Animate, Blender/Max/C4D/Houdini, and others. And I use animation editors in game engines too.
After noticing the blog entry announcing this product, I was curious and after trying it a out I would have to agree with the other animators here: it is counter-intuitive to use coming from other animation software.
Personally I fumbled around for minutes before understanding the workflow, and I had to read the intro article to get up and running. But I got quickly fed up with animating stuff. It's not terrible, just... really awkward. It's easy to tell that this is a game engine dressed up like animation software. And not really pulling it off.
I agree with the others here that it is VERY obvious no-one ever consulted with actual animators, and the developers sorta copied stuff from other animation editors. But without real understanding of animation workflows?
For actual film/shorts animation work solid free alternatives exist: OpenToonz, for example. And that timeline is a joy to work with, comparable to commercial apps such as Animate, ToonBoom, and TV Paint. Those allow us to create/draw things too instead of relying on external assets only. And add various high-end effects! Not even mentioning nodal compositing in ToonBoom, OpenToonz or Blender.
So I will not and cannot compare it with off-the-shelves animation software. This is in my opinion still too limited. Comparable to a toy and too clunky. Animators -even novices- would be better off avoiding it.
Which leaves game engines and animation apps meant for web animations.
Compare Tumult Hype, Soala Animate, or even Google Web Designer - much simpler and intuitive to animate in. And built from the ground up for the type of market that, I feel, the Construct team is trying to dig into.
Or compare Godot. I like to animate stuff in Godot, because it feels similar to other animation software. It also has a proper graph editor, and properties are easily animated with the key icon, which is again similar to After Effects. The nodal scene architecture fits an animation paradigm better too. And there is support for FK/IK animated characters. And last but not least easier to preview animations which can be playing while editing other animations. In short, it is fun to animate in.
If I may make a suggestion Ashley? Hire an experienced all-round animator and allow that person (and other animators) to inform your new animation product. Because in its current state I'd say you will not succeed. It's fine for a game engine animation editor (still clunky to work with though ;P ), and even if your new animation adventure fails, you'll still have a much improved animation editor in Construct.
PS the animation software market is much more congested and competitive than the game engine market. Free industry level competitors are readily available like Blender and OpenToonz. Kiddies rely mostly on free options or hacked old versions of Flash.