« Web Animation Packages »

Introduction

Web technology is a trend that is constantly developing and expanding, particularly in view of the growing number of users with broadcast access. Provided the site has the content to back up the face paint, the web sites with the most dynamic and creative displays will inevitably be those that visitors will flock to and keep returning to.

Several years ago I was arguing with a BT executive over the future of the internet and claiming that before 2010 we could be using OC1, even OC3 class connections to the home for multimedia content and online viewing, that the Internet or what will supersede it will replace television as we know it. Naturally, he laughed this off, saying that they (BT) would never allow it.

Five years after more forward thinking countries like Canada, the UK finally has broadband available. True, at an average of 512kb/s it’s some twenty times slower and almost twice as expensive as some other countries but it is here and it will only get better - and the faster users can download the more eye candy they want. Meanwhile in the US companies such as Telco Systems and 3M are already integrating IP products to offer. XDSL had an article on Gigabit broadband even back then.

As the time of writing (July 16th, 2002) some 459,772,122 copies of Macromedia have been downloaded. With 98% of the market it has long since become the de-facto standard for creating content rich multimedia for the Internet. Similarly, some 300 million copies of shockwave for Macromedia’s Director have been downloaded. A whole new Market has been created just to offer plug-ins for these animation veterans and the marketing is still expanding near exponentially.

You only have to look at interactive games at children’s television sites like CITV, Cartoon Network, and Angelina Ballerina to see that surfers start very young and very demanding.

It’s a hunger I aim to help fill...

Web Animation packages

Note: Prices and versions are for July 2002. Check for updates
	Anim-FX $27 Direct (over the net) The effects are limited to text only, with up to five line of input. That said the effects available are quite impressive and would take a considerable amount of time to recreate in Macromedia. I would recommend this as an addition to the arsenal or for home users.
	Macromedia Flash Flash MX: £219 + VAT Studio MX: £589 + VAT Flash is used to create streaming vector animation, lightweight video and rich internet applications. It’s not so much what can you do with Flash, as what can’t you. The range of features and level of manipulation available make this a must have for professional web authors and artists. However, and this is a big however, the learning curve for this application is immense and way beyond most users. Added to this, there is no way to quickly throw a presentation together. Given the range of creative effects available at the click of a button in budget and shareware animation packages I consider this a poor failing on their behalf. Too much effort appears to have been placed on creating the vector images and not enough on actually manipulating them, especially given the number of formats Flash can import. I recommend the Studio MX version over the Flash MX though for its value for money as it includes a range of Macromedia products.
	Macromedia Director Shockwave Studio 8.5 £899 + VAT Shockwave Studio now includes Intel Internet 3D Graphics Software paving the way for developers to deliver scalable, bandwidth-friendly interactive 3D Web content to over 300 million people and to create attention-grabbing presentations, advanced 3D games, learning applications and interactive entertainment. It goes without saying that nothing is without a price, and not just the four figure cost. Assuming you’re naturally creative and more than a tad computer literate you are still talking upwards to six months to get a grip of all the features of this awesome package.
	Paint Shop Pro® 7 Anniversary Edition $109 Direct (over the net) (£34.99 from Jungle.com) Paint Shop Pro has nearly as much creative power as Photoshop for a tenth the cost and it’s far easier to use! Added to this is the Animation Shop which you can use to quickly construct animated gifs for banners, buttons and logos. This package is firmly a must have.
	Presto Web FX £24.95 inc. VAT direct (over the net). Will be in the High Street (Only £9.95 when I looked in May 2005) According to Digital Workshops website it will allow you to quickly create unique, eye-catching animations in Macromedia Flash format using ten different styles of special effects at the touch of a button. The effects included are: Wave, Cube, Morph, Explode, Curl Up, Twist, Spiral, Rotate 3D, Cross Fade and Lens. As it is due for release this month (August 2002) I've not had a chance to see a copy yet.
	Swift 3D $159 direct (over the net) Swift 3D v2.0 allows you to create high-quality, low-bandwidth, scaleable 3D vector animations. Further, when the scene is finished, Swift 3D can export in Flash's .swf format as well as .eps, .ai, and .svg, which makes it about as easy as it gets to create Flash scenes with a 3D program. It features easy to use extrusion, bezier, and lathe tools and can import eps, .ai, .dxf, or .dxb files. Trial versions are not available, though are under consideration.
	SWiSH $49.95 direct (over the net) A tenth the price of Macromedia’s Flash and tenfold that easier to use. Unless you are a guru with Flash, this is a must have product. And if you are a guru, import your work and still maybe save hours in putting together a reasonable package. There are a few wrinkles I’d like ironed but if you are going to create flash animations I wholeheartedly recommend this package. It even gets a link on Macromedias' list of sites devoted to Flash and Flash Developers
COMMENTS & EVALUATION
A copy of SWiSH was handed to me to create a Flash animation my home page. "I'd rather try Macromedia's Flash" I mumbled rebelliously and downloaded a trial copy of that as well. An hour or so later with a trial copy SWiSH and I had finished the first draft. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for but with a few alterations still gained some server space and a link from the home page. Experimentation with different backgrounds may prove to be the answer. I have tried to recreate the scene with Flash 5 and then Flash 6 MX and several hours later gave up in frustration. The learning curve for Macromedia's Flash is sharper than my patience, though I will go back to it given time. Ultimately, Flash will deliver the best results, but if only at the expense and weeks if not months of practice to learn to use it to it’s full potential. The actual elements are fine, but there are concerns over how the animation will look depending on the browser and screen resolution being used. Perhaps some detection scripts should be employed to detect the users’ settings and load different versions to suit. I would have liked to have seen templates. For example most pages are "best viewed at 800x600" or whatever. The packages of the market let you set the absolute size of the template (ie Flash defaults to 550 x 400 pixels) but not the size of the target audience / viewers settings. At the end when the tunnel scene fades in it is left sitting in the middle of the leather background. This is a source of concern. There are two solutions in mind. The first is to render the initial background black, but that would mean substantial changes to the rest. As this would include altering the current Ackadia logo this was deemed unacceptable. The best answer is to lose the tunnel scene (and have an "enter site" button put in). I'll need to register Swish first though - the trial timed out while I was experimenting. One alternative was to redirect to scene 8. finishing off the animation on a second webpage. This raises issues of its own though. Due to abuse many people - myself included - now dislike and distrust redirects in general and most search engines will actually veto sites employing this. I'll have to check someime whether spiders and bots can detect redirects embedded with a flash scene. Including animated gifs using SWiSH is not as easy. The image of the cowled figure is actually an animated GIF. Flash will import it as such but I found no easy way to do this with SWiSH and have had to leave it as a static figure. Whether being animated would add to or detract from the animation as a whole remains to be seen. Finally, I would have liked to employ some of the text effects possible using Anim-FX but I needed the registered version to do this. These can be recreated in Flash but that is for the future.
STORYBOARD
"Welcome to" slides in at the top Sound bytes from the Highlander film plays "ACKADIA" fades in top and center Traveller/monk character fades in centrally "Welcome to" message appears typed in beside the character (centre screen) Images representing some of Ackadia’s covered topics swirl in and vanish from the bottom left, right and centre as 4. types out (One image per line of text) "Welcome to" messages fades out and white box fades into its place HTML code appears typed out in the box Essence is click Dwarf to continue All elements fade out and a picture of a dungeon tunnels fades in Image of Dwarven warrior slides in from the bottom center. Sound sample ends. (Click Dwarf to enter site) See the finished effect