Animation Software Review: PM Animation

PM Animation reminds me of Flip Boom in its simplicity - but with more sophisticated functions in a less streamlined package. At first glance you'll probably think there's nothing in this $39.95 software package that you can't get out of a free image sequencing program, but after playing with PM Animation for a while I was actually pretty impressed.

Underneath the clunky Windows 95-esque interface is a surprisingly easy to use bitmap animation program. It's nothing spectacular or innovative, but it's functional, feature-rich, and fairly cheap. You can draw frames from scratch or insert existing raster-based art, and while the drawing tools don't exactly lend themselves to finesse they're still suitable for creating passable textured and shaded images, or editing existing images. There's a nice array of animation and image effects that apply with the click of a button, and they're very simple to use.

What impresses me the most, though, is the effortless feel of the program. After a few minutes, using PM animation starts to feel as natural as breathing, with tools and functions accessed unconsciously. I don't have to think of where anything might be. I just look where I expect it to be, and there it is. No interruptions to the workflow, no hunt-and-peck, no frustrations.

A few things bug me. Standard Windows keyboard shortcuts don't seem to work. I tried Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y, and my animation neither saved, rolled back my last action, or repeated my last action. For someone who doesn't like having to stop what he's doing to navigate the cursor to the save button (especially while drawing), that's annoying.

Also, the precision required to expand the options for the toolbar buttons is frustrating - and definitely interrupts my workflow. Like Flash the buttons expand from a little marker in the lower right corner, to let you choose which tool you want to use. Unlike Flash, there's no margin of error that will expand the tool options anyway even if you don't hit the little marker right on the nose. I spend my life staring at computer screens and light tables. I have bad eyesight, permanent eyestrain, and only middling hand-to-eye coordination. I'm not going to be able to hit the tiny triangle head-on first try, and after six or seven times this goes from annoying to maddening.

I'd be willing to overlook those things and forgive for the sake of usability if I could actually save the animations I create. When I tried simply saving the file I'd been playing with, the save hung at about 25% and stayed that way for the entire time it took me to write this review. When I tried previewing the animation in my browser, I thought I'd have more luck - until it told me I'd have to save the document first, and then hung at a tantalizing 99%.

And an animation program isn't much good if you can't actually preview, save, and export those animations.