TAPPTOONS SOFTWARE FOR TRADITIONAL DRAWN CARTOON & STOP MOTION MODEL ANIMATION

 

This page updated 12th April 2007

**MAIN FEATURES OF THE TAPPTOONS ANIMATION STUDIO

FIREWIRE OR USB SINGLE FRAME VIDEO CAPTURE

TWAIN-BASED SCANNING FOR DRAWN ANIMATION

TEN ANIMATION LEVELS WHICH CAN BE VIEWED SEPERATELY OR MERGED TOGETHER

50 UNDO LEVELS

Download now? CLICK HERE

** You can increase the number of levels by importing merged multiple level animation from other scenes and placing it on one level of a new scene **

Comprehensive editing of the Dope Sheet .........Images can be scanned, drawn or captured from a video camera (using a compatible video capture card).......You can choose your line colour and comprehensive paint facilities are available........Images can be flipped, rotated or reduced in size.........Snow and rain weather effects can be generated within the programme

Levels can be made transparent for `ghost` effects..........Moving backgrounds can be created, continuous repeating backgrounds can be made.........Individual animation levels can be moved North, South, East or West or a combination of two directions........Completed scenes can be made into AVIs completed with soundtrack using `wav` files either imported or created within the programme....Anti-Aliasing option when creating AVIs.....new High Definition resolution for HDTV production 1920 x 1080 pixels format......a range of 1.5:1 resolution settings to suit some digital still camera formats....newly added 10 frames per second running speed.....scene deletion provision

Transitions between scenes can be created using wipe or dissolve effects.......Fade-in or fade-out effects can be added to scenes......Track-in and track-out shots can be made with an option to blur the backgrounds for 3D effects

**RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR THE TAPPTOONS ANIMATION STUDIO

Microsoft Windows 98/98SE/ME/XP (XP is recommended for larger animation resolutions)...........DirectX 8 or later.........Screen resolution 1024 x 768 or larger..........24 or 32bit True Colour 16.8M colours graphics card settings (16 colour, 256 colour or HiColour not recommended).........500MHz Pentium II, AMD K6-2 or better processor............256 MB RAM or more.............A large capacity hard drive (Your needs will depend on the length and complexity of your animation project)..............TWAIN compliant flatbed scanner...............Firewire or USB inputs for DIGITAL VIDEO CAPTURE.............ANALOGUE VIDEO CAPTURE with MCI compliant video capture card (some may work with the programme, some might not. Bitmaps or AVIs created using other programmes and capture systems could be imported into the Animation Studio using the Import AVI and Import Bitmaps functions)

 

To read the Animation Studio helpfiles CLICK HERE

 

 

To download the Tapptoons Animation Studio version 5.0.0.1

CLICK HERE

 

 

When installing the software make sure that no other programmes are running. If the setup programme freezes on the first window press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and cancel the setup programme and also take note of what other programmes are running by reading the window that shows after pressing the keys.

On my own machine programmes like EasyCD Creator, DirectCD, and RealPlayer are all running in the background from Start Up and such programmes may disrupt the installation process so it`s a good idea to unload these programmes in the same way. They will return next time you reboot your computer.

 

The Tapptoons Animation Studio provides facilities for animation artists to produce finished broadcast quality animation images in the form of AVIs or bitmaps to be carried through to other computer editing systems.

 

# What it will do dept:

 

All the features of the Linetester will be included. Imports from a scanner or video camera ( with a compatible capture card, not all will work ) and the facility to draw frames using a mouse or graphic tablet and pen directly into the computer system.

 

A range of AVI output resolutions from 320 up to 1920 pixels in width, 240 to 1080 pixels in height.

 

Ten animation levels and one background level.

 

A choice of line colour. Erasure of unwanted matchlines.

 

Pre-programmed snow and rain effects.

 

Provision for moving backgrounds and individual levels in any direction. Backgrounds can be up to four times the final image height or width and continuous backgrounds constructed. Backgrounds can be imported bitmaps or scanned in from existing artwork or drawn directly into the computer system.

 

Semi-transparent levels ( or combination of levels ) can be built for `ghost` effects, the transparency being variable to allow images to fade up or down on chosen frames.

 

Construction of finished blocks of scenes complete with mixes or wipes between scenes.

 

The completed bitmaps are all available uncompressed to provide the best quality for any following editing and processing stages using other programmes to produce MPEG2 or compressed AVI files. However, due to the amount of disk space that bitmaps can take up on a computer, there will also be an option to save bitmaps in compressed form using either JPEG at 100 per cent quality setting or a specially created lossless compression method based on run-length encoding for 24 bit bitmaps.

 

Optional progressive blurring of background detail when the "camera" tracks in on a subject, giving a depth-of-field 3D effect. This can be combined with a moving or still background and/or any weather or motion effects applied to individual animation levels and/or any transparency effects applied to individual levels.

 

Output to compressed or uncompressed AVIs with or without soundtracks

 

A facility to record soundtracks in PCM wave format (sound card or on-board sound facilities required)

 

 

# What it will need to run:

As always with programmes that use a lot of large graphic files you need the fastest processor, biggest hard drive and largest amount of RAM that you can afford. A bare minimum of 1GHZ processor, 1GB RAM and 40GB hard drive might be a good idea, it all depends on how long your final movie is to run and the final image size of the bitmaps used.

 

A recommended system would probably be more like a 3GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and as big a hard drive as you can afford and maybe several of them! The amount of data soon builds up with the linetest stage, colour bitmaps stage, merged levels stage, background stage, combined animation with backgrounds plus backups of various stages in case you change your mind, sound files, final scene builds ( again with backups kept). A finished widescreen colour bitmap can take up to 2MB of hard drive space (6 MB if you`re using high resolution bitmaps to facilitate tracks and pans within a frame) and at 25 frames per second that`s 1500MB a minute, 15GB for a ten minute movie.

 

The Animation Studio has been designed to use a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or larger. It`ll work on 800x600 but you`ll not be able to see all the controls. There will be an upper limit of 32,735 frames on the dope sheet (this is a programming system limitation, not my choice) and this works out at about 45 minutes running time at 12 frames per second, half that at 24 fps, of course. Most scenes wouldn`t be that long anyway I don`t suppose. The same limitation will apply to the final AVI output so your big feature will have to be constructed in at least two parts! And, of course, there`s the infamous Video for Windows AVI 2GB file limit to take into consideration.

 

To use sound a PC with a soundcard or on-board sound facilities is required.

 

The above specifications may be subject to changes due to continual improvement of the Tapptoons Animation Studio but this page will be updated periodically to reflect any additions or other changes made.

 

I feel I must add at this point that the camera option is best suited to making movies using puppets and other 3D objects, which is perfectly feasible with both the Tapptoons Linetester and the Animation Studio, but for line drawings the scanner is the only really worthwhile image source.