Beginning Animation with Simple vs. Advanced Programs

[Franklin]

I have been thinking a lot recently about whether people just being introduced to animation should use simple or advanced programs to learn the basics (most specifically pivot and flash). For simplicity's sake, and to focus on the actual animating part, lets remove the factor of cost as well as losing interest. Could there be some advantage to starting off simple, or is it just best to begin using the tools that allow for your animations to have more potential as early as possible? Do you think that learning basic principals is best without the many distractions of flash? If so, at what point are you good enough to move on?

I personally believe that it is much easier the correctly learn poses and spacing on pivot that on flash. I might even go so far as to say that the simple program helps to lay a solid foundation that could possibly put you ahead of other flash users. The reason for this is that pivot helps to eliminate some of the annoying distractions, like stick construction and re-sizing, that make what is more important hard to learn in flash. With pivot you can learn easing, flow, physics, etc. that can later be used in more complex softwares. As for the point at which someone is ready to move on, I believe that they should be at least a low intermediate on DD, as that is around where most of the important principals have been learned.

[Extra]

From my experience, even though I still use Pivot.
I would say learning everything thats basic with Pivot is the best, just like you stated.

"The reason for this is that pivot helps to eliminate some of the annoying distractions, like stick construction and re-sizing, that make what is more important hard to learn in flash. With pivot you can learn easing, flow, physics, etc."

So actually, I fuly agree with you.

[Raymond]

Each program has their own advantages and disadvantages. Like with pivot it's difficult to create a full-body animation. It's not impossible, but most people would use flash for this, where they can see the onion skin while trying to draw the next frame. In pivot you would need a second program which would make the stick figure builder transparent so you can faintly see the onion skin, but doing that is very tedious, frustrating, and hard on your eyes.

With pivot you will also be very limited with mixing colors. Pivot can create any color you want, but good luck trying to get two colors to fade into each other. You'd have to create multiple sticks and make them different shades of that color to create a fade effect. While in Flash you can do this fairly simple.

If your planning to animate professionally, I would do as you suggested and get better at the basics of animation using pivot. Usually this gives you an idea on how much you really like animating. Since a lot of people jump into it thinking they can make cool animations with ease, but quickly realize it takes patience and practice. If you still enjoy the concept of animating, try moving onto flash. It will be somewhat difficult to adjust to drawing the figure out every frame, but you'll get the hang of it. Later you could even consider jumping into an even more advanced program like Maya where you can create your own models and move them kind of like pivot, but in a 3D field.

I think in the end it comes down to your preference and what you want to achieve in your animations. I've used 3 different programs, but I guess you could say I enjoy using pivot the most since I find it efficient for creating simple animations which express emotion through movement.