Animation maker?

[Brimstone-x]

This might sound silly, but I'm a huge fan of the RPG Maker Animation system. The simple drag and drop and transparent sprites were a great idea in my opinion. I was wondering if anyone knew a program similar to this that makes animations. Doesn't have to actually save as anything. (I have a program for recording on-screen activity.) It just needs to be able to select a backround and drag and drop sprites/images moderatly easily and have a few basic effects.

Yeah, basically, I'm looking for RPG Maker's Animation system, but with more slots to put my sprites (Rather than the limited 25(?) frames.)

If anyone knows of such a program or something this can be done in, do tell. Your help is appreciated.

 

[FlippyD]

Learn flash?

There isn't any program that can do what you want to do, because all programs with animation capabilities use interfaces like flash (compositing software, etc) or like Toon Boom Studio (old-school lunchbox style animation.)

 

[Brimstone-x]

Meh. Thats fine, I have a bunch of stuff for this kind of thing already. I just found the RPG Maker animator so convenient, rather than using paint to line them up and whatnot, it is much easier this way. Oh well. I CAN still use my RPG Maker method. (Make the Animation and use Camstudio to record.)

I just thought there was something more convenient out there than having to allign every picture and paste them again and whatnot, rather than just check the last frame to line it up better. Oh well.

My only gripe with the methods I use now is I can't put huge things on screen and whatnot because of the limited size of the blocks. As well as some others flaws that have slipped my mind at the moment.

 

[FlippyD]

Learn Flash.

You don't have to line up frames, you can just go "I want this ball to be here at frame one, and here at frame 30" and then Flash will do the in-betweening for you.

 

[Tohsaka]

There's also AJAX Animator, which can export to flash, silverlight...etc

 

[___]

If you just want to work with sprites and drag and drop them around for animation use Gale or another sprite-oriented image editor with animation support and avi and animated gif exporting capabilities (or other standard formats). It's much simpler than flash. Just imagine a standard layers system like you'd find in Photoshop, except each layer is an animation frame, that's basically what Gale does. If you want to layer in audio you will need some other software, but if you're only worried about images that's all you need.

Speaking of your gripe about aligning frames, Gale has an onion skinning feature, which layers the previous and/or next frames partially transparent under your current frame.

 

[Brimstone-x]

Thanks for the help guys.