TVP 9.0 -- a curious non-sighting

[masterchief]

I am still amazed at 55yrs old that I have all this creative horsepower available to me... I carry around a Gateway 17" widescreen notebook, 4gigs of ram, duo core 2.16 processors.. ouch! it hurts, but the pain goes away. I will surely upgrade to v9.0 I have 10month old son, 5yr old daughter. they will both have fun with it when they become capable.

regards,
William

[Sierra Rose]

Yes, my 3 yo granddaughter constantly pesters me to draw with my stylus. I let her do it a couple of times and created a monster. I don't really want her in my workspace. But I must say, I am amazed at how gentle and adept she became with the stylus in a very short time (staying on the tablet and not put it down too hard for a stroke.)

[Mandalaholic]

I did not purchase the upgraded TV paint when many of the Miragers did. I was wondering what the cost for the newest upgrade would be, given the fact that that I did not purchase the last one?
Unfortunately I'm in dire need of space and speed first. My machine is stuffed to the max, and has become extremely sluggish. I tried to experiment with a 5 sec. HD project, and my computer just laughed at me before it took a nap. I'm looking at external hard drives, can anyone make any recommendations? I was told to steer clear of western digital. I'm considering getting a HD camcorder, so I figure it might b nice to have a TB. If anyone can make a suggestion, I'd really appreciate it.

[Mandalaholic]

"I love Paris in the Springtime".... that was a hilarious comment! Got my snickers going early this morning.

[metalusion]

... i'm still using mirage for everyday work because that's what we all use there.

forty five minutes is about how long i've used 8.6 since i bought it.

something inconsistent in your purposes :
45 mn for a month ... and you are supposed to be a professional working everyday on Mirage/TVPaint ???
so my calculator tells me you are working less than 10mn a week !
geez... we are very hard-workers here in France with our legal 35h/week !!!

boy i wish i had a 35hr week. we americans can learn a thing or two. even a 4/10 week @ 40hrs would be fantastic.

we are doing about 24 minutes of animation (storyboarding) in 5 weeks including 2 rounds of revisions. this is for a tv series.

now we've changed the process so there is less drawing and earlier setup in 3d (maya). so i just do very quick thumbnails in mirage
for my sequence. there is no reason for me to switch from mirage to tvpaint because all the tools/scripts/custom sets are already set and
why change programs in the middle of a workflow.

i purchased tvpaint just out of curiosity and wanted to support the best program for my workflow. (i'll stop this train of thought now to stay sane )


i would say a 50hr workweek is average unless due to difficult scenes/technical problems i will work much more.

but the perks are quite nice as well. i don't want to paint an ugly picture of my employer. we have in house catering that cooks delicious meals, barbecue every wednesday in the summer, and private gym, raquetball, tennis and swimming (my daily activity).

life is good.

[metalusion]

I once had a film studio with an Oxberry animation stand which cost $ 50,000, a Cinemonte 10 plate editing table, $ 30,000 and an 8 track sound studio with a mixing board, wall mounted microphone outlets, 5 16 mm tape recorders etc., probably $ 60,000 (I can't remember anymore), all these machines needed constant maintenance, plus I had constant film and tape and lab costs, and delivery costs across states and sometimes countries every week, the cost of renting space for all that equipment -- the price of production was huge. I worked like that for almost forty years. Yet I managed to squeeze out a profit.

Now I have the cost of two or three pieces of software (Vegas and TVP $ 600 each, Directory OPUS $ 80), all my maintenance consists of some software updates once in a couple of years, my computer hardware needs a bit of updating about once a year, all my delivery costs across states and countries is over cable broadband, I collect rent for the space I used to have my studio in, and that's about it.

So what is there to complain about? The enormous amount of competition coming from people who can afford to have the kind of studios I used to have contained in their laptops or a corner of their apartments on a couple of home computers (see "my work place" thread) and maintain day jobs so they can beat my prices with ridiculously low bids.

In Philadelphia, the 4th or 5th largest city in the U.S. I had only two competitors in the old days. Now there are hundreds of home studios in my district alone, plus a plethora of one man, in house production "studios" within add agencies and offices of clients I used to service but who don't even remember me anymore.

Yet, I also have the entire world with its vast network of globally connected markets for my service range.

So I'm not complaining about anything.

hi Paul,

you are right we are getting more for less. that's the beauty of technology. just think how much more photoshop can do vs a pencil. there's an argument that a pencil is much better because it's real etc. but that's another discussion. i could complain all day about this or that but i'm not going to. if i decide to upgrade i'll do it. that's it. i've taken my lumps. such is life.

i remember the oxberry very well. the first animation studio i worked for had that setup and we used it all the time. now everything is compact and digital. some good points some bad. i learned animation by working in the industry and it was a benefit to be part of every step of the process. design,layout,storyboard,animation,assisting, key assisting, key animation, cleanup, camera work. only sat in a few editing sessions though. need more of that.
next process i'm excited to be a part of is sound design and mix.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Who do you work for now -- it sounds like a prominent studio?