Classical Animation for the Web!
by John H. Farr

WebPainter 3.0.5 from Totally Hip Software is primarily an animation program, it's true, but look more closely: each editable frame consists of 32 separate layers -- something special must be going on here!

This is more than quickie banner-making software: as the PDF manual makes abundantly clear, the makers of WebPainter wanted to implement "key concepts of classical animation": the use of cels (frames), layers, and onion-skinning (which places a pale image of the previous cel behind the one you're working on). This allows very precise alignment of your animation and all its components, down to the individual layers of each cel. Professional animators will love this ability, which almost seems overpowered for turning out web graphics.

WebPainter also employs sophisticated bitmap and vector graphics tools to help you paint, draw, and manipulate images in more ways than we could possibly discuss in this review. I hope the talented designers of this very capable graphics package will forgive me if I just say that most of you will be quite happy with the tools provided, and in any case there are more here than in most such applications. (Love that smudge tool!) The documentation is pleasantly well-written and carefully explains the characteristics of each item in the bitmap and vector tools windows if you need help getting started. My only gripe is that the text tool works like the one in Photoshop: you can't enter text directly into your image but must first type into a separate window. Anyone used to simpler programs like wwwART 2.0 ($19.95 from MicroFrontier) where such things are possible find this extra step quite frustrating, despite the editing and compositional advantages offered by having the text on its own layer.

(At this point we should say that if any of this sounds confusing, then WebPainter isn't for you: Yves Piguet's freeware GifBuilder is all you need to produce excellent animated GIFs using existing image files or ones created with your favorite painting program!)

With WebPainter, users can create complex graphic images and edit them freely on any of each cel's available 32 separate layers. The program saves your work in its own proprietary format, which preserves the layers. Exporting to an animated GIF, for instance, flattens everything for the Web, so saving your original animation as a WebPainter file has obvious advantages. If you know what you're doing, having all those interchangeable, editable layers at your disposal can help you create some very sophisticated images.

And there's more, of course. Lots more, like over 133 types of standard transition effects, all editable. The mind boggles, as someone used to say. In the quick & dirty web banner example above, the "explosion" transition (default settings) is featured, in which the preceding frame is blown apart by the one that follows By carefully altering the delay times of the transition cels, you could create more realistic explosive effects like rumbles and aftershocks. Very nice. The effects and transitions alone are probably worth the price of the application.

Did I mention that Photoshop plug-ins work with WebPainter? And WebPainter makes it easy for you to tweak your files and optimize for faster loading, too. In fact, the Totally Hip Software web site claims that WebPainter "produces the most compact animations in the fewest steps," a pretty strong assertion considering the competition. The program imports and exports to animated GIF, BMP, PNG, JPEG, Photoshop, PICS, PICT, and QuickTime formats.

Still, at this point you're probably wondering what WebPainter doesn't do! Well, there's no audio capability: WebPainter exports to QuickTime but can't add a sound track. No doubt you could manage that with the appropriate application once you had your QT movie saved, but not with WebPainter. And there's no "tweening" (application-generated transition frames). They could also really use a cooler application icon, but that's about it for obvious drawbacks.

In the goodies department, the $89.95 package also provides over 1,000 royalty-free GIF clip animations -- the artist in me says "Aargghh," but then someone had to produce the clip art in the first place, right? And a clever person can find a lot of use for these clips. You also get the full QuickTime 3 Pro version with WebPainter, a nice little bonus.

You will need a Power Macintosh running OS 7.1 or newer, 8 MB of application RAM and 15 MB of disk space plus QuickTime 3 (included) for WebPainter.

PROS:	Low price, versatile bitmap and vector drawing tools, highly sophisticated layered imaging ability, "classic" animation techniques supported. And don't forget those amazing built-in effects and transitions.
CONS:	Too many windows (hey, where's my document?) and more gadgets than beginners will need, though the documentation is very good.
CONCLUSION:	a solid four out of five. I'd give it even more, but for interface and ease-of-use reasons in the image-production department, this reviewer prefers Macromedia's Fireworks, whose drawing tools are somehow more fun to use. But WebPainter is a very sophisticated classical animation application with powerful built-in effects and transitions and stands out as an excellent teaching device. Artists will appreciate the layering technology, too.

John H. Farr edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and writes a weekly column. He satisfies his creative urges by working on the ZOO ZONE, his own experimental cyber-sideshow.

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October 06, 2008