[Akira Hasegawa]

Any comment or suggestion to my program I've created?

http://www.tsunamichannel.com/jam/

It seems like there is an iPhone application called AnimeMaker already.
Maybe I should come up with another name for this program. Any suggestion?

http://anime.kenmaz.net/

Anima!? = ANIme + MAker
AniCha = Anime Channel
Anime-chan = Anime Channel
JAM = Java Anime Maker
AniPro = Anime Producer

If you have created some interesting anime, it'll be nice if you could share that with us.

[Create a Comic]

Anima sounds too close to "animal." AniPro makes it sound like a professional program. JAM's not bad, just be careful not to put "Project" at the end of it.

AniMaker rolls off the tongue well. The mascot (if not Kotone) could be Ani-chan (or Ani-tan), similar to the popular Vocaloid mascot.

[Deamon007]

The app looks great, it will be interesting to see what people will make with it.

I like the name JAM sounds funny.

[rikchik]

Reminds me of an old Apple II program called Fantavision. Much better interface and framerate though!

[romy]

I remember you were making something like this before. Is this the finished version?
Anyway, good job, bro.

I now know that you have a YouTube for Tsunamichannel.

-romy

[Snapxynith]

I'd recommend something more like AniCell Magic, Anibriated, 'Tween the Jump, Cell Cascade, Smooth Emote, Anima Fountain, Cell'ing Something?, or Anime Expresser.

As a note, anima sounds like animal because the words anime, animal, animation, and any English word with the prefix ani- descends from the Latin word anima which means "life." So there is a distinct reason for it. -The more you know

[Akira Hasegawa]

As my sister said, I worked on a similar program before (more than 10 years ago), but the interface wasn't that great.
I think this newer version is much easier to use.

Thank you for many suggestions for a program name.
It seems like in order to make an unique name, I need to make a name longer.
Short names do not work. So, how about?

JavAniMan - Java Anime Manufacture (5 hits on google)
animilator - anime annihilator/simulator (9 hits on google)

I thought of "FantaVisionII" or "Anime M@ster", but I might get sued:^_^;:
I also enjoyed "Tween" since it sounds like "Toon".

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

"YAJAM" = "YAJAM is Yet Another Java Anime Maker".

[rikchik]

Tweening is the technical term for this kind of thing - that's what Fantavision called it, and I remember that morphing was originally called "polymorphic tweening".

[Timp]

JAM sounds good to me. Acronyms that can be pronounced but aren't really words are always good, eg. Sai (yes I'm aware that "jam" is a word).

When I first saw this, I thought it was morphing between bitmap images... well, you could write a thesis if it could do that. What it really is doing is nearly on that level, too.

I grabbed the app version and tried making some simple images to test it out, but the tweening doesn't seem to work for some reason... one line works, but if I have several, it always makes the last one interpolate to where the 1st one is (or so it seems). Am I missing something, or is it not intended to deal with this kind of thing?...

Also, it's pretty hard to work with, even allowing for the stuff due to be added (selection etc)... would it be easier to import from a vector format (flash, photoshop, or sai) instead of making your own version of their vector art tools? Or are you intending to integrate the lineart tool you were working on before?

Also, if you're intending to make a full UI with timelines and so on, would you consider looking at C#? It's generally better than Java for making applications. You should be able to build it as something that can be built into a webpage too, if you're looking for that (ActiveX or somesuch), although I haven't really tried that myself...

[Akira Hasegawa]

one line works, but if I have several, it always makes the last one interpolate to where the 1st one is (or so it seems). Am I missing something, or is it not intended to deal with this kind of thing?...

I wrote an instruction for drawing multiple lines. I hope this helps.
http://www.tsunamichannel.com/jam/

Also, it's pretty hard to work with, even allowing for the stuff due to be added (selection etc)... would it be easier to import from a vector format (flash, photoshop, or sai) instead of making your own version of their vector art tools? Or are you intending to integrate the lineart tool you were working on before?

It'll be cool if I can import a vector format, but that may be later.

Also, if you're intending to make a full UI with timelines and so on, would you consider looking at C#? It's generally better than Java for making applications. You should be able to build it as something that can be built into a webpage too, if you're looking for that (ActiveX or somesuch), although I haven't really tried that myself...

I'm thinking of learning Objective C, so I can write an application for iPod touch in future.

I think I'll go on with the name JAM. It sounds fun.

So the new address is:

http://www.tsunamichannel.com/jam/

[kyr]

Oh, you finished it Akira! I'll try playing with it when I have some time. Nice to see you working on comics again too.

[Deamon007]

I just have to say you really made an amazing program.

[Nerdcore]

Yay new Kotone animation ^_^;

It seems like the program is becoming more powerful. Compared to the earlier samples on Youtube the latest sample looks more lively and natural to me.

[Create a Comic]

Once this is polished up, you should consider advertising it to other web comic artists. I think many of them would love a quick easy way to animate their characters in shorts.

[Onii-chan]

before releasing it, especially on graphic / aesthetic intensive platforms such as the iphone, i would recommend adding a graphical toolbar or dragable tool set for most of the common operations so that the users dont have to memorize all the keyboard shortcuts, etc.

back when i used to be into game programming, something i did often (and i also saw this with my buddies) is that we would be programming something and since we are the developer we would bind all the triggers to keys (since that is the fastest way to go about testing). but if you come back to your own app like a month later, you dont know what the heck is going on, lol, until after going through the keypress section of the source.

so as a suggestion, it would probably be a good idea to take some time to polish the UI, that way more people can jump into it with a shorter learning curve and you can use it in the future without going through your keybinds =)

great work on YAJAM ;-]

make a g1/android version of it too ;-]

[Water]

Very cool. I do indeed remember when you had the ExCoKo characters where you could change expressions or add glasses and stuff. This is a really neat... extension of that. Glad to see it all worked out; I can sympathize about the "having to start from scratch" thing.

And I'm glad to see you back too.

[Timp]

Wow, cool bit of tech. I tried making a sample, but I can't get it to load Kotone.txt locally so I can save it

It's pretty hard to use right now unfortunately, which might put some people off:

The area to click on parts is really small (particularly the mouth - I was trying to make Kotone talk, along the lines of this, but the mouse covers the area you have to click on...) Something visual would be nice, like a drop down list with pictures of the parts that change (in a perfect world )

A timeline would be good too - its pretty hard to change things that you've already done right now.

Is it a lot of work to build these animations? The end result is nice, but doing a variation of each area to match each variation of each other area seems time consuming to do yourself... Are you planning to take submissions for them? I know there weren't many people who submitted extra characters for the script writer, but it seems like this is more suitable to smaller additions - you don't have to draw all the frames of a character, you could just add one expression, or a custom pose or short animation.

Having to restart coding several times sounds unfortunate... You ought to be able to minimise that kind of thing with better design though. Have you ever heard of 'agile' design? I'm not sure what to recommend as a quick introduction, but the general idea of having elementary functions that you can build up to be more specific seems like it would help. If you're already doing something like that then, uh... good luck


Ambitious technical projects like this always make me think of a quote from one of the guys who made Doom (Mike Abrams): "After you finish the first 90% of a project, you have to finish the other 90%." Keep it up!

[guzu_ligo]

I really was hoping to find a program that is free and could replace flash. I wouldn't say it is great now, but it sure does have potential.

But, you really need to care about the visual interface. The more available it is, the more people would use the program. It is not a good idea to depend on people scrolling down to read what each key does. People want to see all their tools right on the same table. I would suggest increasing the screen size and utilizing the added space for putting the visual interface of the tools. Think of people as lazy, and you'll get a far better program.

I think I should suggest that you add something like "Save as code" which converts it to Java code. This would help programmers use it to make characters for their games.

Keep up the great work