Your opinion about Macromedia Flash Power?!

I was surprised to learn so many people use flash for just the drawing aspect. I always loved it back in highschool and I thought i was the only one who thought flash was great for drawing.

Flash is now being used for a lot of TV shows, i dont see why somebody wont use it to make a movie soon.

Didnt somebody here mention a movie being made using flash?

yeah i did. was Queer Duck but Ape or someone else said it wouldnt get made coz it was a crap subject.

im working on a possible feature but its not going to be a complete Flash thing nor is it going to be longer than 50 mins so its not quite a film.

Also its not a go as of yet. should know more about it this week.

ehm because traditional just has that look...the pilot episode was great of Samurai J.

but,i'm sorry,i really don't like the flash clean and crisp look,theres just something about it,but thats a matter of personal taste.

i like flash because i'm able to animate in it,stylistically its not on the top of my list.but flash could evolve.

Allot of people think flash animation is the new 2d animation revolution,maybe in the sense that more people can now animate with affordable software,but otherwise,the general public doesn't know what software we use,they see something they like or don't like,simple as.

Hi! I am not sure if anybody has posted this link yet, but here goes:

http://www.coldhardflash.com/

It has a link to all the shows done using Flash, such as "Being Ian" (my personal favorite), "Foster's Home", "Coconut Fred", "Max and Ruby", etc. You might be surprised at how many they are already.

Hi kacinka, and welcome to the AWN Forums. Your english is fine. Flash is a great program. It's very versital and I use it for everything from TV character animation to drawing to page layout.

Cold Hard Flash is a great site for all things Flash, and Aaron does a great job of searching the globe for new Flash happenings.

To my knowledge there have been two feature length movies animated in Flash, "Booty Call," and "Little Pimp," and the "Queer Duck" movie is being animated as we type. I'm not sure if they were released in thearters or if they've all been direct to DVD.

Aloha,
the Ape

.. and for exemple Samuray jack is a Flash Tv series cartoon, but for the movie the animator used the traditional technique... why?! :confused:

Samurai Jack wasn't animated in Flash. It was animated traditionally both on TV and in the movie.

Aloha,
the Ape

I'll just chime in for the sake of posting something relating to animation for a change (I'm trying to change, really). Flash has a lot of potential and works very well for many people. The animation tools are ok and you can get them to do whatever you want, but I personally find them a little cumbersome (especially compared to other packages I've used). I like it for small projects and doing pencil tests, but I don't know quite how to use it on a bigger project.

Personally, I can't imagine how studios deal with having a dozen or more people working in it. I come from the 3D studio background using Maya which makes it very easy to keep files up to date, a group in synch with each other, and allows the studio to easily expand it to fit their pipeline with tools they've developed for it. I'm guessing it can be done in Flash because people are doing it, I just have trouble imagining how.

In other words, it's good, especially for the small studio and indy artist, but I think that it could do much better with some additional tools for the animator and better ways of displaying the huge amount of information an animator needs to keep track of. I like the tools Maya offers for keeping track of animation, but then again, that's the 3D side of me talking.

I'll just chime in for the sake of posting something relating to animation for a change (I'm trying to change, really). Flash has a lot of potential and works very well for many people. The animation tools are ok and you can get them to do whatever you want, but I personally find them a little cumbersome (especially compared to other packages I've used).

In other words, it's good, especially for the small studio and indy artist, but I think that it could do much better with some additional tools for the animator and better ways of displaying the huge amount of information an animator needs to keep track of. I like the tools Maya offers for keeping track of animation, but then again, that's the 3D side of me talking.

Maya also has an extra zero at the end of it's price tag ?P

I totally agree the tools in Flash could be improved a ton, but I've been professionally animating with it since 1999, and not much has changed from an animator stand point. We've tried asking Macromedia for years to change simple things, like reversing the termanology for it's "ease-in" and outs, which are backwards. Or adding more room to the instance number box so you can see more than two numbers, so you know if you are on frame 11, or 111, or 1111, or 111111111, or... oh you get the idea. Anyway, tons of animators, a lot from big studios like WB, Cartoon Network, Disney, Revolution, and Renegade, have requested these and other changes and Macromedia has come back with the same reply. Animation is a niche market for Flash so adding tools for that segment is useless.

Oh well, I still like the program and do a lot with it, including roughing out my animation befor I go to Maya and do it. It's fun, fast and easy, and I think I'll be using it for quite a long time.

aloha,
the Ape

Flash is indeed a very versatile tool, it can't do everything, but it can do many of them.

Many productions have been created with Flash, I am sure the gang will fill you in on the specifics.

I use it for graphic design. It's one of the greatest vector tools out there!

I am not a huge fan of the latest two versions, I am still using MX (not MX2004, although I played with it). Using an older computer these last two versions are just too cpu intensive.

Maya also has an extra zero at the end of it's price tag ?P

I totally agree the tools in Flash could be improved a ton, but I've been professionally animating with it since 1999, and not much has changed from an animator stand point. We've tried asking Macromedia for years to change simple things, like reversing the termanology for it's "ease-in" and outs, which are backwards. Or adding more room to the instance number box so you can see more than two numbers, so you know if you are on frame 11, or 111, or 1111, or 111111111, or... oh you get the idea. Anyway, tons of animators, a lot from big studios like WB, Cartoon Network, Disney, Revolution, and Renegade, have requested these and other changes and Macromedia has come back with the same reply. Animation is a niche market for Flash so adding tools for that segment is useless.

Oh well, I still like the program and do a lot with it, including roughing out my animation befor I go to Maya and do it. It's fun, fast and easy, and I think I'll be using it for quite a long time.

aloha,
the Ape

Price is most definitely a big advantage over Maya (but then again, I wouldn't want to do 3D in Flash just as much as I wouldn't want to do 2D in Maya). More that I'm just comparing the tools that are out there with the tools that Flash doesn't have.

It kind of blows that Macromedia has looked at Flash like that especially considering it was originally an animation program to begin with (if I'm remembering correctly and not romanticizing the effort to use multimedia to sell genitalia enhancements).

Hopefully, now that Adobe owns it they'll start making it more homgeneous with it's other products like After Effects (I just checked out 7 and really like the promise of it's new graph editor). If they can add in some of the good stuff from their version and keep what works with Flash, well, it has some real potential. Hopefully they can get someone in charge that realizes it's useful for more than intro screens.

My big hope is that Adobe will eventually acknowledge that Linux is a viable computer OS to release their software on. I know the entire VFX community would love it if they could use Photoshop without the wine interpreter.