Computer technology has transformed the way we produce and
experience media, and animated content is no exception. Since 1996, Flash
animation has revolutionized the way much of animation is produced for both the
internet and television. But like any technology, Flash has changed things for
both better and worse. While the software has allowed animators to produce
content of high quality more quickly than before, it also lets content creators
crank out exceptionally low-quality animation with unprecedented ease.
Flash animation has been one of the most widely expanding
tools for internet and television animation in the past two decades. Currently
one of the most popular tools for 2D computer animation, it can create
animation much more quickly and efficiently than traditional cell animation.
Thus, it has become nearly ubiquitous for web-based animation, and is decently
popular for televised animation. However, Flash’s efficiency and ease of use
has had two contrary effects: it allows animators to create detailed animation
more quickly, producing high quality animation that can rival the output of
traditional animation; but it also lets animators create cheap animation really quickly, resulting in mediocre
animation that can be hard to watch if executed poorly. We will look at
examples of both ends from the internet and television.
Flash vs. Traditional
Animation
The Flash authoring tool provides many features that make it
more efficient than hand-drawn animation. The most prominent of these are
vector graphics, recyclable animation, and automated tweening (Finkelstein and
Leete 2). Vector graphics are a method of storing and rendering images based on
points, lines, and fills. This setup produces images with clean, sharp lines
and flat shading that take up very little memory. These lines and colors are
very easy to edit, which means one can fine-tune the graphics easily. This
makes drawings much easier to manipulate than hand-drawn work, where such
fine-tuning would, at best, require copious erasing and re-drawing.
Another huge timesaver is recyclable animation. A sequence
of images can be stored as a re-usable chunk of animation called a “symbol,”
and used as many times as is needed. This method does exist in hand-drawn
animation – watch any Hanna-Barbera cartoon – but it is especially powerful
here, as these symbols can be replayed at arbitrary size and rotation, and
duplicated indefinitely within a single shot.
Lastly, tweening is a process that smoothly interpolates
graphics across a series of frames. This allows for smooth changes in position,
scale, rotation, and a number of other properties. In traditional animation,
such changes generally require redrawing each frame by hand. These features
serve two purposes: they make animation very easy to create and manipulate, and
very efficient to store on a computer – a three-minute cartoon can take up less
than 600 kilobytes of space, while a decent-quality video file of the same
length can take up 60 megabytes!
Bad Examples From the
Web
Great timesavers they may be, heavy or unrefined use of
these techniques can create less-than-pleasing results. This fact is visible in
abundance in early internet cartoons, from a time when slow network speeds
necessitated these shortcuts even more than production constraints. For our
first example, let’s look at one of the very first internet cartoons1,
John Kricfalusi’s The Goddamn George
Liquor Program2. The graphics themselves are quite good, with
smooth, nuanced linework and a style that translates easily from John K’s
earlier hand-drawn cartoons. However, the animation itself is ridiculously
limited and choppy – most looped actions consist of only two or three frames,
and characters just snap from one drawing to another – a stark contrast to the
relatively detailed graphic style.
Now for cartoons with a different set of problems, we could
look at pretty much every cartoon ever posted on Newgrounds, but let’s just
consider a few decently well-known ones. We’ll look at David Firth’s Burnt Face Man,3 the earliest
episodes of Jon Mathers’ Neurotically
Yours,4 and Shawn Vulliez’s video for Lemon Demon’s “The
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.”5 These cartoons all have the
same issues: the line quality is chunky and jagged (courtesy of the smoothing
algorithm on Flash’s “paintbrush” tool), and animation is quite limited, making
heavy and obvious use of motion tweens for most character movement. While the
animation is passable compared to John K’s early Flash work, the graphics are
fairly hard to look at.
Good Examples From the Web
On the other side, there are internet cartoons which make
good work of Flash’s toolset. A prime example of animation that uses limited
animation to an advantage is Matt and Mike Chapman’s Homestar Runner cartoon series.6 With the exception of
the very earliest cartoons, the series uses clean, simple, flat graphics and
fairly restrained animation, but in a way that produces an appealing result.
The animation style uses the efficiency of Flash’s tools to their full
advantage, without falling into the caveats that make other cartoons display
them for the worse.
Then there are more modern internet cartoons that go in the
opposite direction to make more complicated animation that either feels
hand-drawn or is very smooth and nuanced. Such is the output of many modern
internet animators such as Harry Partridge,7 Chris O’Neill and Zach
Hadel,8 and Max Gilardi.9 All of these animators tend to
use very smooth and full animation that looks miles better than older Newgrounds
fare. This is likely in part due to the fact that faster internet speeds have
made streaming video a viable platform, so animators don’t have to worry about
file size constraints. As well, streaming video allows animators to composite
Flash animation in other programs, to add subtle video elements and shading
effects that enhance the look of the cartoon to beyond what one can achieve
with pure vector graphics (Gilardi).
Flash has also seen a moderate amount of use for television
animation. You would expect that a professional studio using such an efficient
program would produce quite good animation. Often, yes, but unfortunately not
always. Many Flash shows have surprisingly mediocre animation, for example Johnny Test,10 which switched
from hand-drawn to Flash in Season 2 (Collideascope); Eliot Kid;11 and Home
Movies.12 These shows are mostly passable, but the animation is
largely flat; consists of thick, bright colors; and uses motion tweening rather
obviously for character movement, along with a decent amount of snapping
between positions. The animation on these tends to be comparable with that of Homestar Runner – which was made by two
people producing an average of three minutes of animation per week.
However, there are a few shows that are considerably worse.
Instead of using Flash to make decent animation more efficiently, these shows apparently
use it to keep budgets as low as humanly possible. For example, My Life Me13 and Pixel Pinkie14 have animation
that’s closer to early Newgrounds fare. Characters tend to be very stiff, and
when they do move it’s usually tweened in a very clunky manner. While the
graphics are cleaner than amateur internet cartoons, the design styles tend to
be pretty unappealing, too. When near-amateurs on the internet can make
animation miles better than your studio-produced TV show, you know you have a
serious problem.
Good Examples From TV
Fortunately, there are shows that actually do push the
envelope with Flash to create animation that can compete with traditionally
drawn work. Shows like Motorcity15
and Metalocalypse16 (especially
Season 3 onward) – both produced by Titmouse Animation – have animation that
uses recycled drawings and tweening to a decent extent, but pulls them off in
an appealing and detailed manner. In addition, the graphic design is quite
well-done, with subtle colors, detailed backgrounds, and composited lighting
effects adding up to a pleasing style. This is a stark improvement over the
bright, flat palettes of the more mediocre shows I discussed earlier.
But not to be too hard on bright, flat colors, because our
last show takes the complete opposite approach to good animation. Superjail!,17 animated by
Studio Augenblick (Season 1) and later Titmouse (Seasons 2-4), goes for a
hand-drawn feel, because it basically is hand-drawn. Nearly all character animation
is redrawn frame-by-frame, making Flash more of an incidental medium for
animation than an actual style (Simpson). This hand-drawn animation is quite
smooth and detailed, especially in during the show’s many over-the-top action
sequences.
Conclusion
As with any technology that makes an art form easier to
access, Flash has produced animation that’s both some of the best in recent
memory, and some of the worst ever made commercially. Both amateur web cartoons
and professional televised fare have output that encompasses a surprisingly
high amount on either end. It is somewhat alarming that companies will settle
for output that is so low-quality for the sake of a cheaper budget, especially
when producing good Flash animation is cheaper still than most alternatives.
But, such is business. As long as well-produced cartoons survive, it’s worth
the trade-off.
Links
References:
Finkelstein, Ellen, and Gurdy. Macromedia Flash 8 for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Print.
Gilardi, Max. Hotdiggedydemon.
26 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 Sep. 2015. http://hotdiggedydemon.com/post/117447750464/a-little-info-for-those-who-are-interested-on
“Johnny Test Test.” Collideascope
Animation Studios. Collideascope, 29 May 2006. Web. 26 Sep. 2015. http://collideascope-animation.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html
Simspon, Aaron. “Superjail Super Interview.” Cold Hard Flash. 26 Sep. 2008. Web. 26
Sep. 2015. http://www.coldhardflash.com/2008/09/superjail-super-interview.html
