...with project leader Gustavo Gonzalez.

Sep 25, 2006 06:30 GMT  ·  By

KToon application tries to become well-known on the market through constant upgrades to its core. I wanted to know more about the actual and upcoming status of this application, so I've dropped an e-mail to the project leader Gustavo Gonzalez and Saturday night, we were ready for the interview. Enjoy!

M. Nestor, Softpedia: Please introduce yourself!

Gustavo: My name is Gustavo Gonzalez, I am 31 years old and I live in Cali, Colombia (South America). I am the development director of the KToon Project. I am a computer scientist and I love free software. By now, I was focused on two projects mainly: KToon and Midas (an ERP standard).

M. Nestor, Softpedia: Please tell our readers about the KToon application, what it does and what a simple user can do with it?

Gustavo: Well, KToon is a 2D animation toolkit. The idea of the project is to serve as a free/open development platform for professional animators. By now, the project looks a little simple, but our goals are very ambitious. In this moment, simple users can do simple 2D animations and export them to swf, avi, mpeg formats. We were very worried about how to design a "very easy to use" interface, so KToon can be used for many kinds of users, even children. Of course, you need to have a basic idea about 2D animation to start using KToon.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: You say, "worried about how to design a "very easy to use" interface", how's that?

Gustavo: In the beginning, we started our interface design trying to do a "clone" of Adobe Flash, that was our first try and our first mistake :). But KToon is an open source project, so in little time we got a lot of mails from animators and designers telling us about the good and bad things about our interface's proposal. So, we took care of it and we started doing changes in many components of the KToon interface, trying to follow the ideas of our main users about our dialog boxes, usability tips, windows behavior, etc... If you check the screenshots of the version 0.7 and you compare them with the interface in the version 0.8, you will see what I mean. In that sense, we have walked through a long road, but we believe in the "Catedral and the Bazaar" vision, so we know that we are walking in the right direction.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: Yes, I know what you mean as I have tested 0.7 and when I grabbed the new version, it was totally different. Is this good for the evolution of KToon? Because I must admit that I didn't know what to do with the new version, it looks complex. Is this the result of the users? mails you have talked about earlier?

Gustavo: Well, the current KToon interface can look complex if you have a pre-concept, if you are expecting the same things you saw in the previous version. It is the same as the computer desktop interfaces, I mean, you always will find users saying that Windows XP?s interface is better or worse than Mac, or that KDE is more complex or simple than GNOME. KToon is a project developed inside the animation company "Toonka Films", so we have a constant contact with animators. Any time we do some changes in the interface, they test it. Then, we receive the feedback about our ideas, and depending of the animators? opinions and suggestions, we decide if we keep the changes or not.

Another thing we do is testing KToon with kids. With a few instructions, they have made some simple animations (about that experience, I have to say that kids love to animate). So, how complex can it be? I think it depends on who is using KToon. Something important to say is that if you change the dialog behavior of the new interface, you still can have dialog box floating if you want it (as the old interface), but it depends on the end user. One of the things I learned in this process is that you always have to give to end users a way to set the interface as they want it. After the version 0.8, the mails saying things like "about the interface, you should change this..." stop coming. So, as I told you, we feel we are in the right direction, although it does not mean we have finished our job in the usability topic.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: Superb! You mentioned about instructions you gave to kids on how to work with KToon; we must let people know that they can find some documentation on your website (http://ktoon.toonka.com/documentation). This helps the new users, right?

Gustavo: Well, it could help, but I have to say we still need to improve the project documentation a lot. This is the moment when I have to talk about the problems and difficulties of the project. It is a little hard to choose where to start, but I could probably say that money is our main problem. We only have two programmers, just working half time, what is a very small team for the goals we expect to reach. I work for the project for free, so I can help with documentation only in my free time. That is a very good reason to have a "not so good" documentation in our website, but you have to add something else, the changes of Qt between the version 3.X and the 4.X. I didn't say it before, but KToon is developed using C++/Qt. The version 0.7 of KToon was built using Qt 3.x. At that time, we were dreaming of some features and we made some manuals thinking about it. That?s when we had to build a lot of graphical components by ourselves, because Qt 3.x does not give us all that we need.

So, in our documentation section, you will find a very basic manual of the version 0.7, and a few others of the 0.8 as result of the changes we have to face in the development of the project. The documentation section of our website is a Wiki, so anyone is allowed to add new material about the project. Any animator or designer is very welcome to write a little manual or help about KToon.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: I was just about to ask why have you moved from Qt 3.x to Qt 4.x, does it provide you with more opportunities?

Gustavo: ...from here to the sky. Months later, Trolltech announced the beginning of a new age for Qt: the 4.x branch, with a lot of new features, especially in the graphics area. Qt 4.x gives us many components we?ve tried building by ourselves, in that sense, when we did the port from 3.x to 4.x we lost some "work" weeks... but it was a sacrifice we had to do, 'cause we won a lot of new features for KToon, for example the Graphics View Framework, which is a complete new concept to build 2D-graphics applications. At this point, you have to understand that we were working with a very small budget for the project, and wrecking from a Qt version to a new one. In that time, we never guessed that Trolltech would take care about their graphical components in the way they do it right now. In that sense, I think Trolltech should be our sponsor, 'cause KToon is a good demo about all you can do with the Qt graphics API.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: What can you tell us about the new Live CD?

Gustavo: That question makes me think about another interesting issue (or challenge if you want to see it that way)....It is the GNU/Linux distributions used to package "stable" versions of every program or library they include. With Qt there are no exceptions, so it is very hard to find "stable" packages of Qt 4.x for any distribution. Currently, you can easily install the 3.x branch. As Qt evolves, KToon does it too... so we have to work with the very last version of Qt to ensure the features we desire (currently the version 0.9 of KToon is alpha but it works with Qt 4.2 RC2). In conclusion, it is very hard to install KToon 0.8 for any Linux end user, because you need a version of Qt that you won't easily find as package. That was the reason that made us think to build a Live CD. We needed to offer a very easy way for animators and designers to test KToon. The Live CD is based on Slax, and it is very small (to be a Live CD, just 140 MB). It uses XFCE as window manager and gives you the minimum tools you need to build and watch a simple 2D animation. In December, we expect (or at least, that is what we want) to release the first beta of KToon 0.9. Obviously, there will be a Live CD of that KToon version :).

M. Nestor, Softpedia: What should people expect from version 1.0? What's the next step in the KToon's evolution?

Gustavo: That is a very intriguing question for me. I mean, if we were able to work on the project continuously, I have no doubt that 2007 will be the year for KToon. I think this is a good moment to ask for help to any company or institution which could find in the KToon project a chance for invest. We had contacted a lot of companies looking for help, but it is very hard to find sponsors if you do not have the "right friends" inside that companies. Coming back to your question, I think that the version 1.0 of KToon (if we can make it) should give you the same features Adobe Flash or ToonBoom give you to do a 2D animation. I have to be clear in this matter, KToon is not a multimedia framework, it is just focused on 2D animation. As KToon can export files to the swf format (thanks to the FFMpeg project), a lot of people think it is a multimedia ide, which is wrong.

What would I love to see in the version 1.0 of KToon? Well, have you ever heard about "As rigid as possible shape manipulation"? (http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/research/rigid/index.html) It is a set of great algorithms to allow designers to build animation works very fast and with great quality. As director of the project, my dream is to put this features inside KToon in the version 1.0. I have to also say that I?d love to see that version running on Microsoft systems too, 'cause a lot of users are asking for that port and unfortunately, we don?t have enough resources to do it yet, but Qt is multiplatform, so technically, it can be done.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: You have talked about money and sponsors. I know this is a very important matter for a GPL project that wants to be bigger, like KToon? did you think of a donations program or something similar?

Gustavo: Yes, we are thinking about opening a Paypal account for donations in a few weeks. We didn't do that before because Paypal has no support for Colombia, so we are dealing with friends in USA to open our account very soon. I am sure that KToon is a tool very wanted by the open source community, so I have no doubt we will find support from end users, and why not, from some companies too.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: What would you like to transmit to the Open Source Comunity and to our readers?

Gustavo: Well, I just want to say to the people that free software is not only about "safe money", it is about freedom, it is about civil rights, it is about the opportunity to choose, to build, to share. Free Software is a way of living. Every year, GNU/Linux distributions evolve in a wonder way, every time you find more and more free applications, open resources, a better support for hardware and devices, better chances to be a free user of software. I invite people to join this movement and enjoy the happiness of sharing and to feel free. Free software is not just about software, it is about freedom.

M. Nestor, Softpedia: Thank you for the interview and for your time spent with me. I wish you success in life and with your project!

Gustavo: Thank you... I wish the same for you.

You can download KToon application now from Softpedia.

You can download KToon Live CD now from Softpedia.