Amazon.com: Customer reviews: MotionArtist

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2014

It took me about an hour to get to terms with Motion Artist. Some people were bashing it in the reviews, but I took a chance and bought it, and I am glad I did. It has its own way of doing things, so I suggest watch a you tube video to get an idea how this software works. If you want more control on keyframes or you like how Adobe implements keyframes, go for After Effects, but be prepared to spend serious money and big learning curve. For me, being able to do a slide show, and be able to export to HTLM5 was the selling point. The fact I can do this very fast, import Manga Studio drawings, pictures, add text, sound and assign motion to the camera, objects then preview the project in minutes makes this software a keeper. Are there things that can be improved? Sure! But I thing those improvement will come. The software is at version 1.2 right now and the features added between v1.0 and v1.2 are very important in my opinion and it shows the developer is committed to improve the product.
Bottom line: for the price it sells on amazon, you can not beat it.

18 people found this helpful

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lg

total waste of money

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2013

Verified Purchase

If you liked motion artist 4 do not buy this!!!! This is very hard to learn and even when you do it does not do what it says. if you ar looking for a program that works and is easy to learn find a copy of motion artist 4 (by the way motion artist 4 will work in windows 8)
I thought I needed to up grade to this new motion artist is why I purachased it. This was a waste of money. Why they changed it is beyond me they had a good program in motion artist 4. I wish they had just made some updates and not tried to make a cheaper verison of there other software.

7 people found this helpful

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RH

Works well.

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2015

Verified Purchase

Does what is advertised. UI is a little hard to completely understand, and that's with years of graphics softwares under my belt. But after watching the training videos and reading the manual, you can get the hang of it. But regardless of what they say, it's not exactly meant for those with no graphics or animation background.

Update: after a few months of use, I've come to realize In all honesty, that motion artist probably isn't what you're lookin for. If you're on a Mac, I'd suggest spending the extra money and buying Tumult Hype 2. It does a lot of the same features, better. And has way more end user support. As well as way more functionality. I used it to create the beginnings of my motion comic website, in about a day.
Hype 2 [Download ]

Motion artist just has too many issues. Non realtime renders in application for layer blending effects in video (which makes them ultimately useless), low res video output regardless of specified document resolution, shotty animation upon export for both video AND html5, forced proprietary coding in metadata and code that brands html as motion artist made, ridiculous UI that functions like an after thought, literally everything is way harder to accomplish in this app than it should be.

It does have some cool features. But I've yet to find another application that can't do them better or easier.

6 people found this helpful

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Dash Riprock

If you are brand new to animation this is not ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2014

Verified Purchase

If you are brand new to animation this is not the place to start. Motion Artist is not the least bit user friendly. You will search the internet long and hard looking for help and will find very little. Smith Micro's tutorials don't explain the absolute basics. Very frustrating.

3 people found this helpful

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JorgeH

Good service, good product, but not very user-friendly for an amateur

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2013

Verified Purchase

It seems like a good product. I bought it for $20. It works well, product was delivered on time and with no damage. My problem is with the product itself. I am not a cartoonist, so please consider this in my review. I know how to use Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, and Pinnacle Studio, so I know about video and picture editing, so I was expecting the software to be intuitive and not to have many problems using it. Well, it is not intuitive, so I turned to You Tube for tutorials and I found only some from the creators of the software. I found a webinar and still the directions were confusing and unclear. So I will play with it and see if I can manage it. It seems a very promising software. I gave it 3 stars because of the not-user-friendly condition.

20 people found this helpful

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Rich W.

Simple to operate yet powerful enough to deliver!

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

The product delivers as advertised, MotionArtist is really easy to get started on because the interface is straightforward and there are very few steps involved in using just about any of the parameters. Literally anybody can easily import images into MotionArtist and get started animating within minutes.
I love this platform because I can perform really sophisticated movements with precise control over the placement of elements and objects without having to navigate a complicated interface and memorize a bunch of proprietary steps.
I really feel like I got a lot for such a small price tag, your only limited by the quality of the images you work with.

9 people found this helpful

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T. Arvis

Was NOT Compatible with Mac OS 10.6.4

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2013

Verified Purchase

This program was NOT compatible with my Mac OS 10.6.4, though Amazon's website page says it is. I also contacted the manufacturer Smith Micro before purchasing it and they also told me it was compatible. Then when I installed it and it wouldn't open I contacted Smith Micro again and their Tech was extremely rude and condescending and told me I needed to upgrade my OS, which I chose not to do just to run their crappy $50 program that was grossly misrepresented. I DEFINITELY was NOT satisfied and would NOT recommend this program to anyone. At least not someone I liked.

15 people found this helpful

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Dnallohleoj

Good if you have the other Smith Micro programs it can bridge.

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2014

Verified Purchase

The fact that I'm giving this 4 stars should let you know that I own the referenced software. You can do it off of just pictures and pre-rendered video, but as you could probably guess, this gives you less control within Motion Artist itself (not that Motion artist has many editing tools). I'd give it 5 if it had it's own drawing tools, but then again, that would make it just like an old version of Anime Studio.

The one thing this has that Anime Studio only wishes it could have is interactivity. In this, you could theoretically make a Dungeons and Dragons or Zork-like game. If you plan on just making videos with the comic book panel element, it isn't worth the investment, you can do the exact same thing in Anime Studio or Toon Boom. If, however, you truly want to make an interactive web comic, this is a cheap, easy, and reliable substitute for Adobe Flash or similar software.

However, be aware, you are essentially a public beta tester since this is only version one. In it's defense, you're getting a pretty freaking good program. It's a new genre on a niche market, by which I mean it does one thing and it does it extremely well. I've used several niche market applications recently, and I must say I've been impressed with all of them.

If you want to buy this in conjunction with other programs, here's the list to track down:
Poser 10 or Pro 2014 (go with 10 if you're a newbie, there's a chance you won't like it)
Anime Studio 9.5 or 10 (9.5 is just 9 with an interface update and preparation for motionartist. DO NOT GET THE DEBUT VERSIONS OF EITHER ONE!!!)
Manga Studio 5 or EX 5 (again, if you're a newbie, just go with the standard one. however, they both have good beginner tools, which is uncommon for Smith Micro's professional end versions.)

18 people found this helpful

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Rommel

Great software

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

I bought this software because I wanted make motion comics quickly. I was not looking for a drawing or animation program. That is not what motion artist for. I already had artwork that created in PhotoShop ready to go so I dropped it into motion artist and created a motion comic in about an hour. I have seen people complaining that this is a cheaper version of smith micros animation programs. In a way it purposely is because the animation programs they have are for animation and u can draw,ink and paint in them. Some of us don't need all that, some of us like already have programs that I use to create artwork. I just needed a simple way to make motion comics, and I found it and I love it! If you need to draw ink,paint and do full blown animation motion artist is not what you need, you need anime studio or too boom. So please before giving it bad review, study what it is for, and if you already have an animation program like toon boom or anime studio then you probably don't need motion artist.

15 people found this helpful

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kiz

The learning curve for using this software is kind of ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

The learning curve for using this software is kind of steep, but for the price you can really do a lot with it. I've only used it to manipulate hand drawn sketches that I scanned in to the program. I haven't used a rendering pad with it yet.

One person found this helpful

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