Storyboarding softwares
In TV series, most companies use Toon Boom storyboard Pro those days. Cartoon Networks, Nickelodeon, DHX Media and many studios I worked for in France on shows like "Gumball", "Adventure time". Most ads on https://www.animatedjobs.com refer to Storyboard Pro as a requirement.
I wasn't too excited to use Toon Boom Storyboard pro at first as I had a lot of teething problems (no pressure sensitivity for example) but the software is really really well design for Storyboard work, way better than the following softwares as it allows to very easily output animatics with camera or object motions but also Pdf files in all sorts of formats. Hotkeys are also very close to the standard (Spacebar to pan, CTRL + spacebar + LMB for zoom in...)
Big problem, the software is extremely expensive so freelancers or students might be reluctant to use it.
$1000 for a perpetual license with no update or $456 for a yearly subscription and $58 for a monthly subscription.
At 60 dollars a month, Toon Boom is extremely expensive so some companies prefer to stick to Photoshop which is only 10 dollars a month with a yearly Photography Creative Cloud subscription.
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html
12 euros a month / £10 per month
In animated features, most companies use Photoshop in a very convoluted way as demonstrated by Kris Pearn on a previous video. Photoshop is great to for the vast array of brushes available and all the nice blur effect or textures in the gradients but Photoshop is no adapted at all for doing animatics so Editorial usually takes over for that task.
TV Paint is an other software used for TV Paint centric 2d animation studios. The Pro edition is the one offering Storyboarding features so it is also pretty expensive at $1.500.
If you are used to jump from software to software, you will inevitably have a hard time getting used to TV Paint as the hotkeys are totally different than other softwares and seem to have been chosen to make the least amount of sense ever especially when comparing to Photoshop for example. D or F3 for brush instead of B, no hotkey for Lasso/selection (L?), F4 for Eraser instead of E for example, no hotkey to delete an instance....). I was watching some Aaron Blaise tutorials and wasn't surprised he couldn't remember the simplest hotkeys.
TV Paint is a great software that has been used in many productions but the learning curve is similar to Zbrush.
Adobe Flash or whatever name it is called those days is still used by a lot of people like British studio The Line Animation
Pixar seems to mostly use their own software Pitch Docter 2 which you might have seen on some behind the scenes videos I posted, but also Photoshop once in a while. There seem to a quick way for the artists to jump from Pitch Docter to Photosohp.
Blender is also trying to become a storyboarding software those days
http://moustachestoryboard.blogspot.com/2017/09/storyboarding-in-blender.html
BlueZoo in London uses PanelForge. I don't know anyone else using it so maybe they made it for themselves. From what I understand, the real strength of the software is that the Storyboard artist can generate a 3d layout automatically and therefore bypassing an entire Layout team.
and the new kid on the block. Wonderunit's Storyboarder
It is still a beta software that is still lacking a lot of features to compete with other timeline based softwares like Toon Boom but it is free!
On a side note, Foundry just launched an information management software called Flix. The software was developped with Sony Imageworks and Dreamworks seems to have embraced it.
I wasn't too excited to use Toon Boom Storyboard pro at first as I had a lot of teething problems (no pressure sensitivity for example) but the software is really really well design for Storyboard work, way better than the following softwares as it allows to very easily output animatics with camera or object motions but also Pdf files in all sorts of formats. Hotkeys are also very close to the standard (Spacebar to pan, CTRL + spacebar + LMB for zoom in...)
Big problem, the software is extremely expensive so freelancers or students might be reluctant to use it.
$1000 for a perpetual license with no update or $456 for a yearly subscription and $58 for a monthly subscription.
At 60 dollars a month, Toon Boom is extremely expensive so some companies prefer to stick to Photoshop which is only 10 dollars a month with a yearly Photography Creative Cloud subscription.
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html
12 euros a month / £10 per month
In animated features, most companies use Photoshop in a very convoluted way as demonstrated by Kris Pearn on a previous video. Photoshop is great to for the vast array of brushes available and all the nice blur effect or textures in the gradients but Photoshop is no adapted at all for doing animatics so Editorial usually takes over for that task.
TV Paint is an other software used for TV Paint centric 2d animation studios. The Pro edition is the one offering Storyboarding features so it is also pretty expensive at $1.500.
If you are used to jump from software to software, you will inevitably have a hard time getting used to TV Paint as the hotkeys are totally different than other softwares and seem to have been chosen to make the least amount of sense ever especially when comparing to Photoshop for example. D or F3 for brush instead of B, no hotkey for Lasso/selection (L?), F4 for Eraser instead of E for example, no hotkey to delete an instance....). I was watching some Aaron Blaise tutorials and wasn't surprised he couldn't remember the simplest hotkeys.
TV Paint is a great software that has been used in many productions but the learning curve is similar to Zbrush.
Adobe Flash or whatever name it is called those days is still used by a lot of people like British studio The Line Animation
Pixar seems to mostly use their own software Pitch Docter 2 which you might have seen on some behind the scenes videos I posted, but also Photoshop once in a while. There seem to a quick way for the artists to jump from Pitch Docter to Photosohp.
Blender is also trying to become a storyboarding software those days
http://moustachestoryboard.blogspot.com/2017/09/storyboarding-in-blender.html
BlueZoo in London uses PanelForge. I don't know anyone else using it so maybe they made it for themselves. From what I understand, the real strength of the software is that the Storyboard artist can generate a 3d layout automatically and therefore bypassing an entire Layout team.
and the new kid on the block. Wonderunit's Storyboarder
It is still a beta software that is still lacking a lot of features to compete with other timeline based softwares like Toon Boom but it is free!
On a side note, Foundry just launched an information management software called Flix. The software was developped with Sony Imageworks and Dreamworks seems to have embraced it.
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