Random watercoloring test…

(Result:  Confirmed.  Rodney is not much of a watercolor painter)

Ha!  I was looking into something else when I saw a strange artifact on my screen capture and wondered why it might be appearing.

Turns out it is a feature and not a bug/defect!

Go figure.

One of my favorite programs (possibly #4 for design, implementation and potential) has been updated.  It should be a tool in any animator’s arsenal.

It is only available for Windows (sorry Mac and Linux users).  You can probably run it using bootcamp or emulators:

https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif/releases

Note the portable version.  Use that one if you can as it doesn’t even need to be installed.  Run it from your USB stick!

What’s new?

• New color quantization algorithm for the encoder 2.0.
• An installer is available.
• Options to automatically adjust the window based on the frame size and to automatically adjust the image zoom based on the window size (after loading a project).
• New translation: Dutch.
• Updated the German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Simplified Chinese, and Russian translations.
• A message appears before deleting frames or discarding the project. It’s optional, you can disable this later.
• The updater detects which type of update it should download (portable or installer).

Bug fixes:

♦ The Insert window was not taking into account the DPI of the image being inserted.
♦ A bug related to the crop feature under a high DPI environment.
♦ The recorder window could stay out of view if it was previously used on a monitor that got disconnected.
♦ After unplugging a monitor, the recorder window was not adjusting its position.
♦ The “Go to frame” feature was not displaying the correct frame.
♦ After deleting frames, the project info was not being saved into the file (project.json). This was causing some false warnings while trying to load the project later via “Recent Projects”.
♦ Added the missing “New Board Recording” context menu entry on the editor window.
♦ Several bugs with the new recorder that happened when using screens to the left or above the primary screen.
♦ The recorder feature called “snap to window” wasn’t working with windows on screens to the left or above the primary screen.

Known bugs:

♠ OutOfMemory exception when importing videos.
♠ ‘{DependencyProperty.UnsetValue}’ is not a valid value for property ‘FocusVisualStyle’ when opening a ComboBox. Please, help me find how exactly this can be triggered.

Experimental features

• Full screen recording.

Tried out the ‘tall grass’ MyPaint brush…

And without the grass…

A quick test of brushes and such…

Why aren’t you using OpenToonz yet?

Turtletooth has release an experimental version of OpenToonz that adds a lot of great features.

Here’s a quick set of doodles testing/demonstrating the Snap option when using the standard brush.  This helps to make quick work of closing those gaps that tend to make areas not want to fill with color.

This is a page (evidently from a sketch book) attributed to Ollie Johnston.

The page is currently going up for auction on Ebay with a starting bid of $200.

It is hard to tell what the actual size of the drawings are by this image alone but I do think this classifies as ‘thumbnailing’.

Of interest is how Ollie is working out the performance (and general movement) of the scene through loose sketching without much concern for detail.  Refinement and detail will be added later.

It’s important to work out the basic idea of the performance and not commit immediately to any one idea.  This is the essence of brainstorming… perhaps the earliest stage in creating a plan.

There is a lot of character in these simple sketches.

It can be hard to keep that character and spontaneity as the production moves forward and leaves this early stage.  All the more reason to make sure what you take forward is the best effort possible.