Collaborating the creative with the technical
Artists' needs are often neglected when it comes to technology. Therefore, an EC-funded project CUSTODIEV (Creative use of style & technology for ordering the design and interactive elaboration of the vision) has designed artists' shaping technology with creative pull. It concentrates on novel ways of animation creation, narrative drawing and performance-driven art in a virtual forum inspired by open source production. The AnimationForge website, a portal dedicated to cartoon animation, promotes such open source concepts as open access, open production, open training and open engagement. It provides a forum so that anyone interested in animation may post and exchange information which can be either creative or technical in scope. For example, it can include artistic concepts, pieces of artwork, practical tips, technological tools, software and so on. The website is made up of two main parts. One is a public part in which general information on animation topics is exchanged between the artistic and technical communities. The other is a private project part devoted to the evolution of the ideas of particular projects. In this way, they have the opportunity to expand into full productions. The future for the AnimationForge website could involve the evolution into a service that supplies hosted applications which are dedicated to the requirements of narrative image. Some examples are comic strip, cartoon film, real recording, video games and interactive media. Eventually the site should be able to gather associated problems and save work from the previous applications so that users may browse them.
