Licensed Music better that copyright lawsuits?

Now this may be just my ignorance of how the music industry works showing, but bare with me.

I just watched a video which told me that Tom Waits employs sixty (60) or more people to search YouTube for channels that had uploaded videos using the sound tracks of any of his songs. When found, they immediately file a copyright claim and or a take down notice of the offending video. And he is not alone. For the vast majority of video creators, a copy lawsuit is a waist of time as there is no money there to recover.

Is it me or does this seem counter productive to anybody (everybody) else?

If you have ever looked into licensing a song through BMI, ASCAP, Marmoset, SESAC, SOCAN or any other media licensing company, you will have found the cost can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. There are a confusing medley of different licensees for variable circumstances. And the complex fee schedule varies as well, which obviously puts the music out of the reach of all but a few tip of the top YouTubers, who only want to share their favorite music.

With approximately 86000 new videos added per day and 60 people searching? I would say that your group are trying to stop an army of ants with a magnifying glass on a partly cloudy day. And I'm not suggesting let it all go free. After all, music has value. What I am suggesting is making it cheap and easy for video content makers to get a one time license for a video. It could go as easy as this.

Users create a social media account on, lets say, a special BMI website (this does not exist, its just an example). The account might contain the users personal information and contact info. Click on a new license form and fill it out, click pay and the site would spit out a one-use license in a PDF for print or email. The license contains the license number (an encoded version of the video description provided by the applicant) and the composer credit text that must appear in the video (end credits) and/or in any extended text description section available on the particular platform.

In order to make and keep this non-transferable social media license valid, the following information would be entered for registration: The date of application, the single upload web site (ie YouTube, Vemo, twitter, whatever), the account or channel name, the name of the video, the song you are licensing, if its the original track or a cover performance, your current follower/friend/subscriber count (more on this later), if your video will be monetized, and your expected publishing date. The License would permanently cover THAT one song on THAT video uploaded on THAT site on THAT channel. Additional uploads or songs would require their own license. IE one (1) song on one (1) video uploaded to YouTube and Twitter = 2 uploads = 2 licenses. Or five (5) songs on one (1) video on one (1) upload on YouTube = five (5) licenses.

License costs would be on a sliding scale (below based on one (1) song, one (1) video, one (1) upload);

$5.00 US - all non-monetized videos regardless of subscriber count.

$10.00 US - monetized video with less than 100,000 subscribers/followers

$25.00 US - monetized video with more than 100,000 subscribers/followers

Seems pretty cheap. But is it? YouTube alone gets about 80,000 hours of new uploads a day. According to Quora.com, the average length of a video on YouTube is less than 5 minutes. That comes out to about 86400 videos a day. If you low ball the figure and say only 10 percent of those bought a $5.00 license, that comes to $43,200 a day. That's per DAY and that only includes the $5.00, non-monetized, video license.

How much are your artists making on those uploads now? Oh, that's right your paying 60 people at 40 hours a week to police just YouTube. And I'm sure there are lawyer costs mixed up in there somewhere (there always are).

The cheap price is the key. Affordable by everyone. The license code makes checking against a database easy. The text credits make publicity for the music that is being paid for by the licensee, and its easy to check the video license validity. Now for a few bucks content creators can avoid video take downs, copyright strikes, all the bad stuff. Who wouldn't do that?

With proper announcements the site would be flooded with applicants. At the very least it would pay for its own operation, policing, and royalties. And since take downs don't make money, instead point creators to the licensing site where they could buy a license and get their video creation restored.

This is not an original idea. There are already sites on the internet that license music for uses like YouTube. But at $14-150 dollars a pop for unknown artists, their percentage of uses on videos is limited. To my thinking, the value here is volume. Getting a great rep and building that 10 percent to 40-50-60 percent licensed with a large and happy repeat user base.

So as I said at the start, I'm not a professional musician. I'm not an executive responsible for collecting royalties. I'm not paying 60 people a day to make me no money and spread animosity about my brand by doing take downs on YouTube. But even I would stop using free Creative Commons music in my videos if for five or ten bucks each a I could use popular music.

Be Well.

Can you make a Thanksgiving at a restaurant?

It may be a silly thought. I’m sure that people do make a happy Thanksgiving at restaurants every year. And probably have for as long as there have been restaurants and Thanksgiving.

In my case, I have been luckier.  Ever since before I was born, my family has held Thanksgiving dinner at home.  For the past 59 years, at my mothers home. Sometimes it was just a few of us, other times there were tables set up all over the house. But it was always at my mother’s house.

And although this delighted me, it was not always a hit with my former wives.  But still it was tradition that reached back into my past much farther than they did. And I was inflexible.

Other holidays have fallen.  Mother’s day, Easter, and last year even Christmas, all home cooked meals that were outsourced, not to carry in, but to dine out. I didn’t complain.  I realized that if I was in my late 50’s that put my mother in her early 80’s.  Cleaning and cooking for holidays is hard work.  It doesn’t matter if it’s for five or thirty family and a dozen or so strays and their families that my mother would befriend and, for a day, make them feel as at home and as much a part of the family as I did. 

We all pitched in to help cook and prepare. But it just got to be too much. So one at a time the holidays fell.  But no matter what happened I still had Thanksgiving.

Until today.

Now I realize that thanksgiving is celebrated across the United States.  And everybody SAYS that it is a day to reflect on friends and family and the few or many gifts life had bestowed on you. People SAY that, but I felt it.  I didn’t realize just how much I felt it until my Mother told me about two weeks ago that she and my youngest brother were looking for a restaurant to make thanksgiving reservations.

I smiled.  I don’t know why I smiled. I certainly didn’t feel like smiling, I felt like running around the room like a spoiled three year old, smashing thing indiscriminately and screaming “No, no, no, no, no!!! “ 

But I smiled.  I offered other alternative and the discussion was long, but in the end fruitless.  Today my mother, my brothers, our sons, and even a new great grandson ate thanksgiving dinner… out.

It took me a while to wrap my head around it.  And I am not a good enough actor to hide my displeasure in the entire affair.  We had eaten many meals at this particular restaurant before and the food had always been good. 

Today I didn’t like a bite of it. However, I couldn’t tell you if it was any good.  I didn’t taste it. I did my best to make light of everything that I was hating, but I’m not sure I fooled anyone.  It wasn’t a tantrum, It wasn’t moping. My thanksgiving was broken and I was realizing that it wasn’t the food.

Since I was nine or so, my brothers and I had been living in a true matriarchy.  My mother was the head of the family.  You just didn’t say no, because you never wanted to disappoint her.  My middle brother traveled from across country to see her.  His eldest son and my eldest son brought their families from states away to see her too.  And my mother was now eighty-three. 

The three hundred pound gorilla sitting in my lap was not about loosing a home cooked meal.  It was about loosing my mother and perhaps my family. Would we still gather in years to come after my mother was gone. Or would we, like so many other families be relegated to seeing each other only during some five or ten year reunion. 

These are questions to which I have no answer. I cannot answer. It’s not just up to me.

So the next gathering is Christmas.  And we will be eating out.  But my attitude will be different. I won’t be secretly grousing about the food.  Because the food won’t matter.  The place will not matter.  Only holding my family close for as long as I can will matter.  And marking every moment we share together.

And that will matter most.

Be Well.

The New Look and New Name

Saguaro Cactus, Mesquite and Turpentine bushes

So I figured that it was time that I stop lying to myself (not about anything important), but about this Blog.  It was never going to be any kind of serious discussion of animation. Thus far there is hardly any reference to animation at all.

So as Google again changed the format of Blogger, I thought it was a good time to change the format of my Blog as well.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but that never stopped me before.

The background picture is my first lie.  Titled "backyard" or something, it's actually about a mile or so north of my house.  If you'd like to see more, just Google "phoenix mountain preserve saguaro" and select images.  They are outrageous cactus and grow in a very limited area. I intend to change the picture occasionally if I get out with my camera.

If you are reading this Blog and you are not ON Blogger, then you probably are not seeing the pictures anyway.

The only thing I regret about changing the Blog is that I lost the pendulum clock that told visitors the time in Arizona, which doesn't change (we don't need no stinking daylight savings). I miss the ticking and the chimes on the hour and half hour.  It was a nice reminder of just how much time I was wasting.  But I cannot seem to get Blogger to accept the gadget again.

As for the entries, they will be whatever comes to mind, I suppose.  I have no great plan.  No mission.  And no agenda.  

I hope these changes find you well.  And I hope you stop by the Blog, the real one...
http://distorteddogma.blogspot.com/  and leave me a reply or comment.

I'm also working on some new cartoons for my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/distorteddogma 

So, enough.  Time to move on to something more interesting.  Whatever that will be.

Be Well.

Haunting Halloweens

The 2002 entrance to the haunted tent

When I was younger, about 1973- 75, I devoted months of my life to a Haunted House in Willowick Ohio.  It was put on by the JC organization and staffed by volunteers.  Admission was $1, half that if you were under 12.  

Times have changed. Now to enter haunted houses can be as much as $20.

Halloween was always a big thing for me.  Later it was dressing up my own house with all kinds of figures and lights, spiders, webs, skulls, and carved pumpkins everywhere.

When my youngest son was in grade school, they had a fund raiser 
Halloween party. Every year I did something for them. Usually some kind of entrance to the tent they used, just to set the mood.  (see the photo above)

Now my participation is simpler.  I put out a few decorations and pass out treats to whomever comes to the door.  Part of me misses the "big deal" of it all,  but then I see the little face of a first time trick-or-treater. The awe and wonder of getting all dressed up and going house to house, seeing all the strangers and getting sweet treats...

..and I'm young and happy again.

May the Great Pumpkin bestow happiness upon your little pumpkin patch.

Be Well.

Taking No Hostages...

So I have been absent for over a year and a half, partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I did not feel that I had anything to say that anyone would be interested in reading.  Even if someone was reading.

Simply put, I had a series of major changes in my life, all linked, and happening in what seemed to me to be a rapid succession of cause and effect. 

I was happy about none of it.   

So what to do with my now empty days and nights?  

My kitchen more or less BEFORE

Call all my friends and cry on their shoulders until they began avoiding me? Nah. 

Write it all out here so my private life would be spooled on so many backup tapes and archived for a hundred years? Again, nah. 

Maybe curl up in a fetal position on my bed at night and cry myself through it all?  

Definitely, nah.

Instead I did something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time, but my ex and I could never agree on what was to be done....  I remodeled my house. Not that I could afford it, but thanks to some timely offers of deferred interest from some local do-it-yourself retailers, I pulled it off.

So days at work and working nights.  It took eleven months. If I could have rustled up some more credit, I'd still be at it.

More or less AFTER

Some rooms got just paint, others got more.  Ceiling fans, light fixtures, paint, furniture, drapes, floors, cabinets.. nothing was sacred.  For the first few months, my right hand held little but a three pound sledge hammer.  I had lived in this house for nearly nineteen years and had changed only the laundry room and a bathroom.  Now those were the only rooms semi safe (although the bathroom did get a change of towels and shower curtain). The kitchen would be the biggest change. Lights, cabinets, floors, ceiling, counter tops... the works.

This would be my sanctuary, my therapy, the route to a new life.  I would do it myself (which I did about 98%). I would not go down, and if I did, I was not taking anybody down with me.

No hostages.

A time to leave...

It began as a glance.  

Not across a crowded room at a party or anything quite so romantic or cliché, but you walked past on a jobsite.  

Covered in paint, hair like a wild pony’s mane, coarse, knotted and bleached by the summer sun.  

It’s been a long trip since that day, well over twenty-three years.  

Since that first day I knew I would never be able to keep you.  

No one ever will.

Even before I had you, I knew.  

But I held on for as long as I could.  

Longer than I should. 

There is so much good to remember, sad that some is spoiled by the ending.

I will never know another woman like you.

But you will never be loved, like you were by me.

Good-bye.

The Elusive "Good" Story

What makes a story good, what makes it sell?

Is it characters? Believable three dimensional characters that you can somehow feel have more life than is spelled out in the story?

Is it plot? An expertly designed plotline carefully laid out, step by step, doling out information in cautious spoonfuls, enough to keep you engaged but not give away too much and have the listener/ watcher/ reader jump ahead to the conclusion.

Is it the setup, the design and deliberate detail to sights, smells, and tastes?

Dialogue? Although bad dialogue can surely kill a story, could great dialogue alone save a bad one?

Is it all of these mechanics that work together, methodically built from research, to outline, to manuscript, following all the rules so rigidly set forth in one writing class after another? The right number of characters, the perfect setting, the correct number of twists in the plot, all the details that can be squeezed into the perfectly build story.

Is that what makes a story good? Makes you want to read, watch, listen to it the first time and go back and start again?

There are piles of manuscripts which stand unread. Perfect to the letter in every way. Every rule followed, all the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed. And yet, there they sit.

Is it that the story, truly is, in the telling?

Going 3D with Blender 2.53

So at this point, I know nothing about 3D animation and graphics. I do understand using 3D environment in a 2D project, but it's hardly the same thing. I use Toon Boom Animate Pro for most of my projects now, having graduated from Studio to Digital Pro and finally to Animate Pro. For 2D, I don't think you can find a better program. It out flashes Adobe Flash© and runs circles around any other competition.

But this Blog is not about Flash or Toon Boom. It's about Blender. Specifically, Blender 2.5.

Wow.

I had downloaded Blender back in 2000 in the 2.0 or 2.1 phase. It was interesting, but I really was not into 3D graphics back then. It seemed awkward and clumsy, but so did all 3D programs.

I downloaded the new 2.53 beta is 22 megabytes (52.2 megabytes installed). I already had Microsoft C++ 2008 Redistributable Sp1 and Python 3.1 installed so installation went without a hitch.

Opening the program was a surprise. The new 2.5 menu layout was great. I had no idea what all the menus and buttons meant, nor what they actually did, but there was a big build view screen and menus to the left an right. It did take me a while to find the wiki documentation online and because this is a Beta version, the documentation is far from complete. But there are lots of great free online tutorial sites for 2.5 already (Blendercookie, Blendernoobies, and BlenderGuru ) and it's not all that hard to make the leap from the 2.49 tutorials (.Creative Cow, Lynda.com, and others). Honestly, they are everywhere and many are free.

In just a couple of evenings I was able to set my personal preferences, create my own version of the work space, and make this simple 3D text

Screen from my machine. Click to enlarge.

As I said, I have no CAD or other 3D experience, so as little as this is, it's big to me at this point. Below is a short video that outlines Blender's history


From Blender 3D 1.60 to 2.50 from Allan Brito on Vimeo.

There were some things I recognized right off the bat. Key Frame animation, by default the time line runs across the bottom of the screen, working with Bezier curves, Inverse kinematics and more.

I've been reading comparisons between the commercial softwares (Audodesk's Maya and others) and Blender, although slightly behind in some features, it seems Blender has lead the way in others and the new 2.5, when complete, should bring Blender up to the industry standards across the board

What does it take to run it? Lets do a simple compare with Maya:

Bender System Requirements
Operating Systems

• Windows 2000, XP or Vista
• Mac OS X 10.2 and later
• Linux 2.2.5 i386
• Linux 2.3.2 PPC
• FreeBSD 6.2 i386
• Irix 6.5 mips3
• Solaris 2.8 sparc

Minimal specs for Hardware

• 300 MHz CPU
• 128 MB Ram
• 20 MB free hard disk Space
• 1024 x 768 px Display with 16 bit color
• 3 Button Mouse
• Open GL Graphics Card with 16 MB Ram

Good specs for Hardware

• 2 Ghz dual CPU
• 2 GB Ram
• 1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color
• 3 Button Mouse
• Open GL Graphics Card with 128 or 256 MB Ram

Production specs for Hardware

• 64 bits, Quad core CPU
• 8 GB Ram
• two times 1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color
• 3 Button Mouse + tablet
• Open GL Graphics Card with 768 MB Ram, ATI FireGL or Nvidia Quadro

For 32-bit Autodesk Maya 2011

• Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business (SP2 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP3 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional operating system
• Windows: Intel® Pentium® 4 or higher, AMD Athlon™ 64, AMD Opteron™ processor, AMD Phenom™ processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 4 GB free hard drive space
• Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL® graphics card
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• DVD-ROM drive
• Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
• 10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
• HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
• Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or higher, Apple® Safari®, or Mozilla® Firefox® web browser

For 64-bit Autodesk Maya 2011

• Microsoft Windows Vista Business (SP2 or higher), Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition (SP2 or higher), Microsoft Windows 7 Professional, Apple Mac OS X 10.6.2, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5.4 WS, or Fedora™ 11 operating system
• Windows and Linux: Intel® EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, or AMD Phenom™ processor
• Mac® computer: Intel-based processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 4 GB free hard drive space
• Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• DVD-ROM drive
• Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
• 10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
• HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox web browser

Now that we know what it take in hardware, what does it take in GREENWARE?
Maya - $4000.00 plus a license for every machine it runs on.
Blender - Free (Contributions encouraged) and the same price for every machine it runs on - Free.

If you are just starting out or planning to expand your operation, it's worth a look.

Scene 1 Background Painting

Although I would love to say that the activities pictured in my previous blog were being repeated again this year, it's just not the case. Due to a series of sob stories which I will not burden you with, my vacation is a "stay-cation", as in stay at home.

But one good thing has come out of it. In the last week I finally finished the background design for the first sequence in my fall holiday cartoon. One that I started last year and didn't even come close to finishing anything but the dance movement study (Which you can see as "Not Quite A Nutcracker" on the second page of this Blog or on YouTube).

The frame above is actually eleven layers which will be animated separately to create the illusion of 3D space. There are details (such as stars and such) which are only added in the final shot. All in all I expect this painting to be on screen for about 10 seconds or so.

And that is why cartooning alone take so much time.

Be Well.

48 Weeks A Year

Forty-eight weeks a year I toil for the city, fixing dimming systems, relay control systems, lighting consoles, sound equipment, network based audio/visual systems in five theaters and one million square feet of convention center. Putting right what always goes wrong.

Two weeks in the summer and two weeks at Christmas, I don’t.

It’s summer

What's Not In Your Wallet?

Well, it finally happened to me. We have had security breaches before, but it was always expected because the attempts followed one of the family loosing a credit card, leaving a check book, or my wife had her purse stolen once. But we always discovered the breach before any money (except ant cash we might have had) was taken.

This week-end started out so nice. We had a break in the 100 plus degree heat, there was a breeze, even a smattering of rain. We had spent most of Saturday morning on the back patio just enjoying it all. Birds were at the feeders, the chickens were scratching around in the lawn, still damp from the shower, the dogs were lazily sniffing around the yard, it was nearly perfect.

The Phone rang and I got up to answer. It was the VISA Fraud center asking me to verify some purchases. I had gotten these calls before. If I or my wife ordered something expensive on the interweb, VISA would call to check and I always voiced my appreciation that they were watching my back. A recorded message asked me to verify several charges made with a charge card ending in 2993. It was at that point I snapped to attention.

My wife, Karen and I have worked very hard in the past eight or so years to eliminate our credit cards. Having each been married before, we had started our new life together with old debt that our spouses had not paid. In addition, we were both working independent doing film, theater, and TV spots and Arizona had made some political errors with the MLK holiday that, like now with the SB1070 law and its dubious revisions, shows coming to Arizona are canceling or just relocating. Work dries up and you live off your credit.

Bad idea,

It took twelve years to get out of that trap. Finally four years ago, just before the housing crunch fell on us all, I refinanced our home and nailed everything that was left. Credit card became plastic confetti in my shedding machine. Bank of America, MasterCard, Sears, JCPenny, American Express, Visa Silvers, Visa Platinums, Visa Visas, all fell prey to the whirling knives as they were paid in full and closed forever. It was ecstasy.

Since we have had a few choice store cards that relate to my wife's company. One General Visa card from our bank and our checking debit cards. No credit balances over $1000.00, everything else is cash. Before the housing market values fell, we even still had over half the value of our home in equity.

So the mechanical voice on the phone said the account ended in 2993, with so few cards left, I know them all. This was not a credit card; this was our checking debit card. This was going to be bad. I listened as the mechanical "man" at the other end of the phone line ran off four charges done that morning at a Wal-Mart in Columbus Georgia. I immediately chose option "5" speak to a human being and was pleasantly surprised that the person answering spoke perfect English. I identified myself and after the obligatory "And what can I do for you today?" question I said, "Stop the card." .
"So these are not your charges?"
"I, and my wife are here in Phoenix, the charges are in Georgia. Stop the card."
"Are you in possession of the cards?"
"I will check to be absolutely sure that both cards are here, but in the mean time stop the card!" I said and put down the phone. Racing into the kitchen I checked both my wallet and Karen's purse and, yes, we had both our cards. Back on the phone, "I have both cards in my hand, those cannot be our charges."
"I see another charge has come through, I put a stop on the card."
"Another charge? Came through just now?" I asked. In my mind I could see dollar bill lining up with little arms raised and being marched out of my account.

So now there were five. Four in Georgia at the same Wal-Mart and one in Tennessee at a furniture store. The woman on the other end of the line assured me that no more charges would be passed and gave me a 800 telephone number to file a claim for the bad charges. After she hung up, I tried the 800 number and got a voice that said the number "could not be completed as dialed."

Perfect.

From A Beginner Animator

I joined YouTube in 2007 planning to use it as an outlet for all the cartoons I would be making. It would be wondrous with a fantastic following.

And it almost happened that way.

The problem was, when I opened my YouTube "Channel" I knew almost nothing about creating cartoons. I had jumped in and was not prepared at all. At my disposal was Paint Shop Pro (Which was still owned by Jasc back then and was a lovely paint and photo program for $99 US) and The Microsoft Movie Editor which came with Windows® XP. Not much in the way of tools, but I had to come up with some sort of place holder for my channel. And this is what I posted:




It's still there actually, even though it's a rough bit of animation, it was, after all, my first.

I began to search for animation programs, not knowing what the heck I was looking for. I'm married and the father of two sons, so I had a tiny budget for starting a new "hobby." What I thought I wanted was Macromedia Flash, but I was surprised to find that it had been eaten by Adobe® and was now out of my price range (See? I wasn't a complete idiot, I did do some research). Any way pirate software was out, because I don't believe in it. A craftsman is worth his wages and all that (but not necessarily the triple wages Adobe was asking). Obviously Maya, 3d studio, and all were right out of my price range and I wasn't sure that 3D was something I should jump into. I mean, don't you need to crawl before you can walk? I came across ToonBoom. I got my first copy of ToonBoom Studio on sale for $250 US (it's $299. now). After pouring through the video tutorials and making several false starts, Two months later my first real cartoon/vlog appeared:





It was up on YouTube just a few weeks later when Lisasimpson, acting as a guest editor, she chose it to be featured on YouTube's front page. A very big deal in those days. At the same time, I had upgraded my computer hardware and the Windows installation crashed. I mean at the EXACT same time. My video went from 315 views in three weeks to 100,000 views that Sunday morning and I was oblivious to it all.

So now it's nearly 3 years later and I have uploaded a few more toons. Each takes a couple of months to build, the Vlog type are faster because I can reuse my character with only a few changes, but the long periods between uploads lost the audience. Now my toons are back where they started with a few hundred view, which is fine by me. I am still learning after all.

For the record, and through a long series of upgrades, I am now using ToonBoom Animate Pro2 as my animation platform. And although I would love to have the Adobe CS5 Production Premium Suite with all the bells and whistles, I still use Premiere Elements ($119 US) to do my editing. The FREE but extraordinary Audacity works overtime to record, edit and clean all my audio tracks. I finally bought my first version of ToonBoom Storyboard ($199 US) to help me assemble my ideas. And I would not be anywhere if it were not for the free music tracks so lovingly composed and shared by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).

And the last element is time. Lots of time. I you are reading this and just starting out, you can get into playing with animation programs on a budget. There are even rudimentary or watermarked programs out there for free even ToonBoom. But be ready to give lots of time. Watch you favorite cartoon and stay for the credits. All the names that go past are positions you must fill with your own time. It is very rewarding when you get it done, but the speed of the progress, or lack of it, especially when you have a day job, was and is my biggest frustration. But if you really want to do it, you can. I did, and I still know almost nothing.

Be Well