Animation Programs

Been wondering what everyone thinks. Which is the best program for animation?

You can be like "this program is best for this type of animation, but this program is better for this other kind."

I just wanted to get an idea of the best programs.
I've been thinking of using photoshop to animate something. But it's just not user-friendly enough for me. Even though the drawing on it is a lot better.

If you really want the photoshop-ish drawing experience on an animation platform, the obvious choice is to get accustomed to the TVPaint interface

Although I would just deal with what flash has to offer while importing photoshop visuals in whatever way I can.

Oh yea. I've always thought about drawing BG in photoshop. But I'm now going for the simplistic but clean drawings.

I could never get clean drawings on TV Paint.

tbh I did TVP for a while but haven't been comfortable with it. I'm just not used to having to make everything a gif instead of an swf lol
I much prefer swf exporting.

I think I'm going to look for plugins for flash to make the experience better. Afterall, if you're gonna do something, go the whole 9 yards with it

I'll keep you posted on things I find.

Lol why export to GIF, keep in mind TVP is meant for serious animation, which means you'll want to export to quicktime format

The problem about Flash, is that it doesn't use pixels like photoshop. So the lines don't stay consistent. They change constantly depending on the colour and the zoom.

Also, the fucking auto-smoothing is a bitch sometimes.

@Tom; I guess that's the thing; I am animating tests most of the time, I don't feel like uploading all that shit to youtube all the time just so you can see it.
Then again... hmm... maybe my audience will still be fine with 2 second videos?

@lelouch; The good thing about vectors is that, say, in pencil mode, it's up to you if the lines should stay consistent with your zooming. You can do it simply by choosing between 'hairline' thickness and anything else.
But color? How does that affect the lines?

Also, you can personalize how much you want pencil or brush strokes to be smoothened.

I meant that, when u draw say, with the pencil tool on the thinest settings. It may seem very thin when zoomed in, but when u zoom out the lines blur and are very thick. And the only way ive found to fix this is to change the colour of the pencil lines to a lighter colour

This is flash, right?

I've never experienced this lol... what version are you using?

Macromedia Flash 8.