Review: E-Frontier Anime Studio 5 animation software

The trailer for the new Simpsons movie proclaims that it is “the movie that dares to be ugly”, emphasising the fact that it’s in 2D, compared to the 3D splendours of CGI films such as The Incredibles and Cars.

Shows such as The Simpsons and South Park have shown that there’s still life in good old-fashioned 2D animation, and have encouraged lots of young people to try their hand at creating their own animations.

Even 2D animation software can be expensive, but E-Frontier’s Anime Studio is an impressive low-cost option at just over £30.

Despite its low price, ithe software provides some sophisticated animation tools, including ‘tweening’ and ‘bones’ (these methods are explained later), which speed up the animation process and make it easy to create smooth, realistic motion.

However, it also has a few limitations that can be overcome only by buying the Pro version of the program, which costs about £120.

The program looks a bit intimidating at first as the main workspace is surrounded by a variety of floating palettes containing a wide array of tools.

The lack of a printed manual is irritating, but the HTML manual on the CD includes a series of tutorials that takes you from basic drawing through to complex animation work.

You start by using the program’s vector drawing tools to create your own artwork. The drawing tools are fairly basic, but should be fine for the sort of simple 2D artwork that you see in The Simpsons and Southpark.

However, you can’t import more complex vector artwork into this version of the program – that option is only available in the Pro version.

Once you’ve created your artwork you can use the program’s timeline window to create keyframe animation.

Anime Studio supports ‘tweening’, which means that you only need specify certain steps within an animation sequence and the program will automatically create all the ‘in-between’ animation frames for you.

It’s a standard technique for animation software, but Anime Studio’s strongest point is its ‘bones’ feature, which is normally only found in much more expensive animation programs.

If you create an animated figure, such as a simple walking man, you can add ‘bones’ to the figure’s limbs. These bones can be linked together so that moving one bone can also affect the other bones connected to it.

You could, for instance, add a thigh, shin and foot bone to your walking figure. If you then move the shin bone, the thigh and foot will automatically move as well, creating a smooth and realistic movement, and saving you the effort of having to animate each part of the figure separately.

Sophisticated features such as this make Anime Studio good value for money, but we’re not sure that we’d recommend it to complete beginners. You need to be able to create decent artwork of your own, and it would help if you already had a little experience of animation work as well.

The program includes a small library of pre-drawn artwork, but it’s limited and the developers obviously hope you’ll buy additional artwork from the store on their website.

The online manual is a bit irritating. It romps quickly through keyframing techniques, and poor editing means that we spent ages looking for a particular command mentioned in the tutorials, but which is only available in the Pro version of the program.

Complete beginners might want to look at simpler rivals such as Toon Boom Studio, but Anime Studio’s powerful animation controls make it a good choice for people who are happy creating their own artwork and already understand the basics of keyframe animation techniques.

There’s a demo version of E-Frontier's software available for download so you can try it out before deciding whether or not to buy.

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