As I mentioned before THWs sales are increasing as they come out of heavy research and development and into more marketing and sales activities. I hear that sales are increasing with the release of more products this quarter.
They continue to get excellent press and they are there all the way with Macromedia and Adobe as a developer of quality cross platform web design tools. I would call it a market with two dominant players and then Totally Hip as these three are the only ones that do Mac and Windows tools; and then many smaller players that do either Mac only or Windows only tools. Most design firms etc have Macs and then PCs.
Here is what yet another web design tool reviewer had to say
on Feb 19, 1999:
WEBREVIEW
webreview.com
Animation
GIF Animation and other methods
Articles
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Animating Your Site with WebPainter 3.1
by Jackie Dove Feb. 19, 1999
"Easy to follow documentation and new enhancements like tweening and expanded import and export capabilities make WebPainter low-cost tool for creating GIF animations".
Web Review Studio
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Animating your Site with WebPainter 3.1
by Jackie Dove
Feb. 19, 1999
WebPainter 3.1
Product WebPainter 3.1
Publisher Totally Hip Software
Price $89.95
Platforms Windows 95/98/NT,
Mac OS 7.1+
When I break open the shrink wrap of a new Web graphics or authoring program, the last thing I want to do is read the manual. Rather, I like to pull down menus, experiment with settings and create documents immediately. The subtleties can wait until later.
Not all programs lend themselves to such immediate and intuitive operation, but WebPainter 3.1, a Web animation program from Totally Hip Software, is one that does. Without a glance at the instructions, I figured out how to string together a set of images into the program's animation cels, save them as a WebPainter document, and export that document as an animated GIF to my Web folder. That took about 20 minutes.
Nonetheless, if you like reading manuals, the Getting Started Guide is explicit and easy to follow, as is the program's online help manual. The program also comes with a printable PDF document complete with tutorials.
WebPainter 3.1, which is a recent upgrade from 3.0, provides a number of enhancements and improvements such as: tween, which interpolates between a selected cel and the next sequential cel in vector mode; merge and unmerge, which helps create text letters; vector text tool, which allows outline text fonts to be selected and merged; export vector image file, which creates vector image sprites; and an export button that creates HTML active buttons. Color palette improvements such as Remove Least Used and Remove Most Similar enhance image colors, while new keyboard commands allow you to add, remove, and lock in colors.
WebPainter 3.1 for Macintosh also includes additions designed to work with LiveStage, Totally Hip's QuickTime-based multimedia product. The company says it will likely update WebPainter for Windows to 3.1 shortly after finishing production of LiveStage for Windows.
WebPainter's system requirements for Power Macintosh are OS 7.1 or later with 8 MB of application RAM and15 MB of hard disk space for minimum installation. For Windows, you need a 100 MHz Pentium or faster processor (a Pentium 200 MHz processor is recommended), Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT version 4.0 or later, 32 MB of memory (48 MB recommended) and 20 MB of hard disk space.
Smooth operation
When creating a new document from the file menu, you can specify bit-depth, size of the cel, color palette, transparent color, and default animation rate or frames per second.
Figure 1: When you create a new document from the file menu, you can specify bit-depth, cel size, palette, transparent color, and default animation rate.
In WebPainter, cels appear horizontally and layers appear vertically, and all cels and layers are numbered. The program uses a standard Macintosh click and drag-and-drag and drop wherein you can manipulate cels to duplicate, reverse, flip, remove, add, and much more. WebPainter can import from and export to QuickTime image or movie files.
An onion skinning feature shows you a "ghost" image of the previous or next cel within your current cel to help you properly position and construct images within your animations.
WebPainter really excels in its art creation capabilities. The program has a complete set of drawing and painting tools wherein you can work in both bitmapped and vector format. Palettes containing colors, brushes, fills, and navigation are all available within the program to tweak your image, or you can create bitmap or vector images from scratch. The toolbars have a Photoshop-style interface. In the Macintosh version, if you copy your Photoshop filters into WebPainter, you can access them from the Transform menu.
I strongly suggest that you take the time to read the Getting Started Guide, or try one of the three tutorials in the PDF manual, to familiarize yourself with the program's attributes and conventions. These are quick and easy to follow, except for a certain vagueness in one of the tutorials which did not quite work as shown: In order to change the position of animation cels, a click-and-drag from the number directly above the cell provides for a smooth rearrangement of all cels without any cutting and pasting of cels.
Each WebPainter document automatically opens with 32 separate layers. Documents are saved in WebPainter's proprietary format which retains the original layers. There, you can view your animation and make changes to it on any or all layers. To view your animation in a Web browser, you must first export the file to a Web format such as GIF, animated GIF, JPEG, QuickTime, or PNG. The program can also import and export to BMP, Photoshop, PICS, and PICT formats.
New take on old concept
In one experiment, I revisited the concept of a photo album I had on my Web site. Instead of several pages of static photographs, I resized eight JPEG files and loaded them into a timed animation with a fade transition.
In this example, I created a new document and imported JPEGs of Elsa (the German shepherd) and Fudge (the Siamese cat). I selected Add Transition Cels from the pull-down menu and constructed a transition fade of five cels so that the cat and the dog gradually fade into each other.
Figure 2: The Document window and the Layers window work together to give you total control over your image. The Document window lets you create or copy cells, navigate to different cells, onion skin, or play your animation. The Cel Layers window lets you view all cels and layers, change the order of frames via drag and drop from the number above the cel, eliminate frames, and add transitions and effects. A tool palette lets you create bitmap or vector graphics within WebPainter 3.1.
When I was satisfied with the preview, which I was able to view within the program, I saved it as a WebPainter file. Saving first as a WebPainter file preserves the original animation and all of its layers. Then, I exported it as an animated GIF. In choosing an animated GIF, WebPainter gives you the choice of palettes to help you optimize your images.
I chose a Custom palette, widest range (under the pop-up menu) and then saved. If you don't like the way the animation plays in your browser, you can go back to the original WebPainter file, tinker with it until you are satisfied, and then re-export it.
Squish Ball
The animated bouncing ball, which consists of five cels, was created from scratch using WebPainter's paint tools and the onion skinning feature.
First, I created a document and used the Oval tool to paint a purple ball. I duplicated the cel and then onion skinned it so I could see how far to move the ball in the next frame. The third frame contained a flat version of the ball, again made with the Oval tool to look as if it had been dropped and squished. The onion skinning was applied again to stretch the ball upward, as if it were rebounding to its original position. I then saved the document and exported it as an animated GIF.
Valuable Extras
WebPainter 3.1 comes with 1,000 royalty-free animations which you can incorporate right into your Web pages. The program also includes QuickTime 3 Pro.
Figure 3: WebPainter 3.1 comes with an image library of 1,000 royalty free animations.
The WebPainter CD also contains some very helpful freeware utilities such as the GifAnalyzer 1.0, GiffyView 1.0, and GifBatcher 1.0, all of which perform image analysis and other informational functions.
You can observe your image or animation with GifAnalyzer to determine its size and download speed at 28.8 Kbps; GiffyView 1.0 lets you view your animation at different download speeds; while GifBatcher lets you optimize GIF files to achieve the fastest download time. These utilities work on all your GIF files, not just the ones generated by WebPainter.
For example, GifAnalyzer told me that my photo album animation is 100 Kbytes in size and would take approximately 35 seconds to download over a 28.8 Kbps modem. That means I must decide whether I really want to use so many cels (five per picture) for a transition fade (which adds to the file size), use a different kind of transition, or just load each picture and increase the time lapse between frames.
A few hassles
There are relatively few downsides to WebPainter, but I do have some minor complaints: If you are creating art in WebPainter, you'll need a large screen to hold all the palettes. Also, the program doesn't support multiple undos.
WebPainter did crash my Mac from time-to-time, but not often enough to raise concern. I tried using it under Mac OS 8 and 8.5, and ironically found it more stable in the earlier system. When WebPainter crashed in System 8.5, it brought my whole system down with it, whereas in System 8, I was able to force quit the application without having to restart.
One complaint I have about the Java-based online help is that it defaulted to Internet Explorer, failed to display properly, and crashed the browser every time.
I was also concerned about WebPainter's interaction with my System folder. This program sends alias documents of all of your images to a folder called Recent Items, inside the Navigation Services folder within the Preferences folder. Navigation Services is an Apple addition that is bundled with System 8 that Totally Hip decided to include with WebPainter. Navigation Services provides an alternate open/save dialog featuring shortcuts to recent directories and shortcuts to recent files, among other things. I prefer that programs leave my System folder alone, and indeed, if you wish to remove the aliases, no harm will come to your images.
If you want to create cel animations for your Web site with a great degree of artistic flexibility, WebPainter is a real winner for a reasonable price tag of $89.95. That price is further enhanced by three very useful utilities and the inclusion of QuickTime 3.0 Pro in the package. |
