BrashMonkey has announced Alchemist, a new 2D procedural animation and content creation suite to empower creators with new types of tools and workflow. Alchemist is an add-on toolkit for their upcoming animation software, Spriter 2. A primary focus of Alchemist is to overcome the usual shortcomings in both workflow and final animation results often associated with current 2d ‘puppet’ animation tools. It will also add the ability to make your characters and animations automatically adapt their animations and behavior to changing situations and environments without compromising the creator’s art or animation style. These techniques could be used in games or a cartoon series to quickly and easily make characters and backgrounds more lively and nuanced.
“We’re really trying to move toward a new paradigm where a high-quality cartoon series can be animated by a solo animator or a very small team” – Edgar Muniz, Lead Programmer for BrashMonkey
“Between the procedural animation features and interactive capabilities, Alchemist will transcend animation programs, into a new class of authoring tool that bridges the gap between animation and interactive content and game creation.” – Mike Parent, Lead Artist at BrashMonkey
Spriter 2 and Alchemist will give artists an assortment of general purpose widgets and controls, like sliders, 3d rotation controls, grids, etc, which an artist can place anywhere in the canvas or on the character itself (e.g. attached to a bone). They can be used to control aspects of a character’s animations, like head turn controls, facial expressions, posture, etc. The same widgets can be used to control custom variables which can represent any kind of influence or attribute such as fatigue, health, mood, etc, which can in turn control how the character looks, behaves, or animates.
If you want to help revolutionize animation and content creation, and further empower your favorite 2d content creators with this powerful new toolkit, please check out the Kickstarter.
BrashMonkey is a two-man team consisting of one game artist and one programmer. Starting with its successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2012, BrashMonkey’s flagship animation tool, Spriter Pro, played a major role in introducing and popularizing 2d modular animation techniques to independent game creators everywhere. You can follow us on Twitter, and LinkedIn, Subscribe to us on YouTube, Like us on Facebook, and visit us at BrashMonkey.com.
Contact info:
Name: Michael Parent
Email: mike@brashmonkey.com