Flash Animation Unveiled

The flash animation is a movable visual animation film which is created by using different flash software. Countless animated television commercials and cartoon films are responsible for the increasing popularity of flash animation. Flash is a vector animation software program which is best applied in making animated commercials and has more advantages over the HTML. Complex animation movies, playing videos are possible only by flash and it does not bother the type of browser being used. Complex 3D animations are now on high hills in the market over the 2D animation programs.

The software Flash was developed by Macromedia which ceased 2005 when the software king Adobe bought them. Since then flash animations are being developed by using the Adobe Flash player tool along with other software packages of some other companies in the market. Adobe improved the basic Flash software and developed other versions with advanced features. The latest version is Adobe Flash CS4 which was released in October 2008. Flash CS3, Flash 8 and Flash MX 2004 are some of its older versions still in use. All the Flash animation program outputs come in .swf format.

Express Animator, Anime Studio, Kool Moves, Toon Boom and Toufee are some other software packages which create outputs in the same .swf format. TrueSpace 3.2, Maya 6.5, Cyberdelia, 3D Studio Max 7.0 are some 3-dimensional software packages creating 3D animation programs at industry or studio level and published by different publishers apart from Adobe.

The Adobe Flash programs have the basic features of drawing by pointing and clicking option, animation capabilities and some tools which are common for 3D animation programs. Some Flash animation software products are Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, Swift 3D; 3D Flash Animator, Flax etc. and each of them have a targeted application purpose.

Flash software is easily accessible and less expensive compared to other traditional techniques and offer huge flexibility in creating the animation programs. Total expense for an animation program using the same Flash software depends on the complexity, style and content of the project. The amount of flexibility it offers by organizing various assets such as the scenes, characters, props and movements for later use or re-use is rare in other software. This provides great advantage to expert animators for creating animation films and mixing animation with live characters. The vector file format allows flash animation to project on 35 mm film and it does not hamper the image quality.

There are a number of popular animation programs available online which are made by using Flash, such as Warner Brothers’ ‘Gotham Girls’, ‘Crime Time’ of Future Thought Productions and ESPN production ‘Off-Mikes’ etc. A number of televisions shows e.g. ‘Meena’, ‘Bobinogs’ on BBC 2 Wales television and films such as ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, ‘Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss’, ‘Waltz with Basir’ etc. are world famous programs developed using the flash animation software.