FIRKAFILM ANIMÁCIÓS ÉS SZOLGÁLTATÓ KFT.

Real-time playback without waiting for the rendering, Any picture resolution and frame shape, Any play speed, Video effects and sound, Integrated picture digitizing for video and scanner, Database structure of movies and scenes, Unlimited number of exposure sheet levels, Various file formats, for pictures, sound and animation,

The Firka software is a linetest tool for cartoon animators. The linetest or pencil test is a working phase of the traditional animation, when the pencil-drawn pictures are shooted by a camera, then these pictures are played by a projecting plan, called exposure sheet. This exposure sheet contains more than one levels. The linetest is an important checking phase because the corrections of the mistakes are really expensive in the following phases of the working process (painting, post-production) even in money and in time. The animator also uses the linetest as an animation tool. In the beginning, the making of the linetest was very similar to the final film shooting: they used film cameras with black-and-white negative film. The next step was the developing some special devices, like video recorders with single step recording. Finally, these days the studios are using personal computers with video cameras. The Amiga computers were popular, because of the good video capabilities. In the last few years, the IBM compatible PC computers are preferred. The Firka software is a system-independent project. This means it is not limited to one hardware or operating system. It made specially for cartoon professionals, to create the linetest easy and fast. We test the software in our cartoon productions under real conditions. The author learned in an art school and he worked also as animator, line-test operator and compositor. The working of the software seems similar to the painting and rendering softwares, but the goal is very different: the line-tester must work as fast and comfortable as possible, but the painting system creates the best possible picture quality with very wide visual effect capabilities. Fortunately, today''s computers are fast enough to finally combine these two requirements.