Glad you enjoyed it!

as an animator for 10 years, yeah, no. Theres no way we can do this work without programs like these. Anime in japan have been using similar products, like retas studio, since the 2000s, maybe earlier in a more primitive concept. There is no reason to do drawings on paper and scan and trace, is there? That's not time efficient. And if youre trying to make an episode a week for a show, yeah efficiency is key.

Toon Boom is staple for most animation studios these days, its a program made by Disney, the original pioneers of animation. Animators are the one group of artists who don't mind making the process of animating easier because of the staggering amount of stuff you have to draw. Animators have been using technical tricks to avoid drawing difficult stuff since the 1930's.

I have little respect for people who don't actually do animation, because they thumb their noses at all the tools that actually make it feasible for a single person or very small team to accomplish. I work in animation, and I know of these types. Always pretending that the only way to make animation is "...like Disney on Snow White in 1937!" Yeah, sure. And so someday I guess they will hand draw their masterpiece, ink and paint it, shoot it on 35mm film or something, I don't know... in reality, whatever it is will likely never be more than a few pencil tests. Because animation is ridiculously time consuming. Meanwhile, tools like these can allow people to get past that nonsense because no one actually DOES have an entire 1930's animation studio at their beck and call anymore- and just make actual finished pieces of animation. They can TELL stories. That's what it's about, not pretend to **gatekeep** the process.