Show HN: Bestsnip – Draw animations online with automatic inbetweening

  • It is a shame that this only supports Chrome/Chromium. As I'm not willing to take the performance and privacy hits, I won't bother with this application until the necessary technical fixes are made. No matter how small of a group we are, Firefox/Safari users should be taken into consideration and could be the best advocates for your animation service.

  • Hello world (in case this helps anyone):

    I drew a circle on the canvas. I hit the plus button in the bottom left twice, to create a new board.

    Selecting the new board, I moved the circle to another location on the canvas, and I clicked the save disk on that new board. I hit the play button.

    The site animated my circle being moved from its location on the first board, to the location I placed it on the second board.

    Edit: Using the hamburger menu, I exported it and downloaded my animation as a .webm video.

  • > Bestsnip Animation Studio relies on the Webm VP9 video codec. Please use chrome or a chromium based browser to view this website.

    how is vp9 a problem? it's been working for years in firefox

  • IIRC, Disney was investing heavily into computing starting in the 90s, including inbetweening automation. Even John Lasseter promoted computer-generated imageries as a way to reallocate animators' time from "gruntwork" to more creative processes.

    In Japan, most of animation still involves paper. Inbetweening is treated more as a craft, and the best animators still do inbetweening for top-of-the-industry projects like for Studio Ghibli and Studio Khara.

  • No Firefox support. :(

  • You need some kind of documentation or a video demonstration. It's not at all obvious how to make an animation with this.

  • The website seems to suggest that Firefox doesn't support VP9, but my research suggests that it supports it since 2013-12-06 (https://www.webmproject.org/vp9/).

  • This is awesome thanks for posting. I managed to make some mean cartoon videos for some friends.

  • Nice, reminds me of discovering Macromedia Flash 3 and trying out their "Tweening" feature. The good old days when the "tech stack" were things like Macromedia Flash and Paintshop Pro.

  • It's remind me the times when I was playing with Macromedia Flash MX

  • Inbetweening is itself an art, I'm pretty skeptical it can be done well for characters. Maybe for hard objects, sometimes.

  • this reminds me of an old XP-era program i had in the late 90s. every now and then I try looking for that program but can never find it (I thought it was called morpheus or something similar).

    Anyways, i have something fun and nostalgic to play with for tonight

  • Shame it doesn't work on Firefox, I'd love to try it out. Maybe someday.