So I’ve been thinking again.
I know, I know. It just gets me in trouble. Whatever.
Anyway. Apple’s been kind enough (or hateful enough, depending on your viewpoint, I suppose…) to release some eBook authoring software to us, the unwashed masses. I think it’s pretty cool; there’s already been a bunch of blowback about the EULA. I’ve already written about what I think about that mess over here.
Here’s what I think is missing: Animation software.
It’s great that I can now easily build these eBooks. Actually, I could do that already, via Pages or Sigil or InDesign (cringe) or whatever. Just this morning, in fact, I built a quick ePub for a friend- something like 70 pages long, took me, oh, maybe 30 minutes. Tops. All text, easy.
What I’m missing is the ability, with my meager skills, to build the sort of nice looking animations that seems so common in the media these days. I mean, I know I could try to learn Blender (have you tried, btw? least intuitive interface. ever.) or shell out the money for Maya or Motion or Rhino or some other overkill industrial strength tool. I don’t really want that. I loathe using InDesign, mostly because it’s so wildly overkill and complicated for my needs- Pages or GDocs tend to be a better option for me. As much as I love my Final Cut Pro rig, lots of the time the quick videos I’m making are faster to build in iMovie. I try to avoid Pro Level software unless I really need it. I find the lighter the weight of the tool, the faster and more often I use it.
So what I really want is a nice, well designed, reasonably full-featured 3d animation software that doesn’t require a huge learning curve. I’ve not found one, have you?
Once I’ve got that- whoo-boy! My presentations and eBooks and websites will never be the same.
t.