ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.05 - AUGUST 2000
Is There Life Beyond Flash?
by Heather Kenyon
There is no doubt about it! Macromedia Flash is the industry standard for Internet animation, utilized by over half a million Web authors worldwide to create animated vector-based Web sites. But are there new tools out there that are being incorporated into todays cutting-edge Web animations? Flash is king when it comes to delivering action and adventure on a low-bandwidth, but are audiences already demanding more? Are artists already beginning to push these freshly assigned limits? We asked several leading companies what they use on this quickly paced and evolving frontier.
© JibJab. Yo, everythings up at JibJab. © JibJab.Gregg Spiridellis
CEO, JibJab Media Inc.JibJab uses Flash exclusively for all of its on-line animation production. We are hyper-focused on creating content that is accessible to the largest possible audience and Flash is the only technology that both works well in a low-bandwidth world and has a massive installed base for the plug-in. To add variety to our productions, we are hiring great artists that are pushing the technology to its limit, moving beyond straight vector animation and producing exciting new collage and mixed media animations in Flash.
Darrell Van Citters
Director, Renegade AnimationWe find Flash to be an excellent piece of software, fulfilling virtually all of our Web animation needs. We do, however, employ a few useful plug-ins. One enables your average, fumble-fingered artist to produce drawings of startling beauty. It's called TALENT. We use another utility, WIT, to inject moments of mirth into otherwise lifeless scripts. In addition, we find that a finely-honed, wood-encased graphite stick is an indispensable aid in pre-visualization. It's also handy for filling out surveys.
Bruce Forman
Co-Founder, ROMP.comWe are meat and potatoes, heavy users of the Flash plug-in and have yet to develop animation on another platform. Why? It is about as ubiquitous as any plug-in on the Web -- thereby lessening the technical burden on our viewers -- and remains a very inexpensive platform for content development. It is difficult enough ensuring that our audience has Flash 4 to enjoy our programming, let alone forcing them to download a foreign plug-in to view it. We will evaluate up-and-coming animation tools, such as Pulse, once they reach a critical mass and approach the development costs that Flash offers.
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