What is Flash animation?
Adobe Flash is the program that is used to create Flash Animation. It was previously known as Adobe Animate. It is used to create an animated movie or clip. Since the program is vector-based, it means that all the images that have been drawn can be made infinitely larger or smaller without compromising on quality. However, Flash Animation does disable your ability to use brushes to add specific ‘touches’ like you would do if you were using photoshop.
Flash Animation itself started as a programming tool that was created to make apps, games, websites, and animations. You can make animation in this software through various methods, one of which is 2D puppets, also called flash puppets. It means creating several parts of a body and then making those into several reusable images called symbols. This method makes the animation process much faster as you don’t have to draw as much.
Scope of use
There are many on-screen examples of shows that have made use of Flash Puppets, one of which is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Pose-to-pose animation is also another way of making animation in Flash Animation. You can create pose-to-pose animation when you define action in-between two certain points on the timeline. The word Tween comes from in-between in animation.
Two types of Flash Animations can be made in pose-to-pose animation, these are Shape Tweens and Motion Tweens. Shape Tweens can only be used on drawing objects. They allow you to transform one drawing into another with different properties. Motion Tweens on the other hand can only operate on Symbols. They allow you to move an object along a specific path, resize or modify some basic properties of a Symbol.
Illustration by @arianna.gif + @anyavkinodraw. Animation by @davecubitt + @riccardo.motion
Additional benefits
Flash Animations are easily found on the Internet and are often referred to as online toons or webtoons. They are mainly saved in an SWF file format. Flash files are smaller in size so you can be certain that you’ll get a faster download. Flash Animation is significantly used to create character animation for entertainment, education, business, and presentation. It can also help in making your website more interactive.
The Gaming industry has predominantly used Flash Animations in their famous games like Magic Ball. Our studio, Darvideo uses Flash Animation to create gradients, textures, and other 3D effects in our videos. You can find out more about this by contacting us here.
