Now that Adobe's Creative Cloud has launched in full, I've been giving their subscription service a try and overall, it's not too shabby; I'm working up an overview of the subscription service as a whole and an in-depth look at Flash CS6 and what it means for animators who rely primarily on Flash for their work. But overall I'm having fun playing with the synching features and cloud storage, even if the price point makes me twitch. I'm upgrading from CS5.5, so I get a discount on my monthly cost...but only for a year. After a year, it jumps up to $79.99. Ouch. That doesn't seem like much now, but over the next year or two? That'll add up. Still, at the moment I'm fairly pleased not only with the functionality, but the service as a whole. But what's your take on the Adobe Creative Cloud offering?

After a lot of talk, a lot of hype, and a lot of anticipation, Adobe Creative Suite 6 finally launched yesterday (note: for purchase only; the Creative Cloud SaaS subscription service is scheduled to launch on May 11th, though there is a preorder option available). CS6 comes with enough new features to break your mind, but of particular interest for animators is the upgrades to Flash: from HTML5 support to sprite sheet generation and cross-platform compatibility. Personally, I'm still waiting for the subscription service go to live--but for you early buyers, it's time to cash in and try it out. If you've bought it already...do you think it was worth the upgrade?

One of my biggest gripes with newer versions of the Adobe Creative Suite has been the price. Even with the new features, the new functionality, and the great new enhancements with every version of the software suite, the cost of upgrading every 1-2 years can get a little steep and a little frustrating, and result in a tendency to cling to old versions that manage to get the job done, even if it's not as quick or as easy.

 
With CS6, though Adobe will be introducing their own version of SaaS in the Creative Cloud. For those who aren't familiar with the term, it stands for "Software as a Service," and allows subscription access to the full creative suite for a monthly subscription price - $50 a month for a yearly subscription, $75 a month on a month-to-month basis, with certain apps available for individual licensing for much less (as long as you pay on an annual contract). One obvious benefit is this allows content creators, who previously may have felt forced to pirate by the price point, to legitimize and use a legal version of the software with a more reasonable monthly expenditure.

The down side? Adobe isn't Rent-A-Center, and there is no rent-to-own option. You could pay on a monthly basis until you've completely covered the price of the software suite, and the software still wouldn't be yours; the second you cancel your subscription, you'd lose access. But this is rather a moot point, when it would take years to completely pay out the cost on a month-by-month subscription. By then we could be on CS7 or CS8, and can simply transfer the subscription without having ever paid full price for the CS6 suite. With cloud storage included in the package, that's not too bad at all.

I know I'll definitely be using the subscription service when I upgrade from CS5.5, though I haven't decided if I'll use it just for Flash and Photoshop, or go for the full suite. What about you? Do you intend to subscribe to Adobe CS6, pay full cost, or let it slide entirely?

Ask the difference between American and Japanese animation, and you may get a fairly ugly response depending on whether the person you're asking is particularly invested in one or the other. I, personally, have no preference, and I'm not about to get in the middle of a hair-pulling fight over what's basically a difference in stylistic preferences...but I can provide a little insight into the visual and stylistic differences, and how you can easily tell the two apart regardless of your own preferences. Whether you think Japanese animation is lazy or think American animation is flat, there are reasons behind those characterizations - just as there are reasons why some find Japanese animation to have more depth, while others think American animation is richer and truer to form. Make your own decisions. I'm staying out of this one.