Has the evolution of Flash technology allowed modern 2D animators more or less creative freedom?

Animation can range from something as simple as flashing text, the movement of picture frame by frame and also includes stop motion animation such as ‘Wallace & Gromit’. The term, “Animate literally means to bring to life.” (Chapman, 2004, 242) 2D animation has parallels with traditional animation.

Traditional animation refers to the techniques used by (and still used by people today). One of those techniques “cel animation”, is probably the best known; “…elements in a scene that might move…are drawn on sheets of transparent material known as cel, and laid over a background…in producing a scene, only the moving elements need to be redrawn for each frame; the fixed parts of the scene only need to made once.”(Chapman, 2004, 243)

Additionally, “The importance of traditional animation can never be exaggerated. The principles and techniques are still THE foundation of animation films of all kinds. No matter what medium you choose and what technology you use, you still need to have a thorough understanding of these principles and techniques.” (Ye) We can relate this to allowing modern 2D animators more or less creative freedom because the “principles and techniques” can actually limit the creative freedom of using Flash technology because you need adhere to those principles and techniques of traditional animation.

2D computer is used to speed up the process of traditional animation. Initially the computers were used to “transfer the cleaned up pencil tests to digital system. No more need for all that hand tracing and outlining in ink.” (Kuperberg, 2002, 10) In this day and age 2D software, such as Flash allows the animator to input by hand such as using a tablet, or tools within the software as well as including scanned frames. We could say that with modern 2D software the animator has more creative freedom because they can scan frames drawn by hand and manipulate them using the software or incorporate hand drawn images with the tablet. Furthermore “You might say that any computer graphic is animation waiting to happen” (Campbell, 2003, 7) because with the2D software you can take any computer graphic and manipulate it in a way to make it appear move.

We could say that animation created using Flash technologies is more efficient; for instance the title sequence for the film Dr. No. The sequence involves the movement of circles as well as other shapes moving around the screen and taking forms of different objects. When the film was made back in the early sixties, the animators would have had to create each cel by hand, resulting in around 3,000 cels, taking many weeks to be produced. The same sequence could be replicated in Flash in a matter of hours because each cell does not need to be drawn individually, the tools available to the animator such as tweening and the drawing tools saves resources such as time and human resources.

This brings up an interesting issue; does using the computer to produce animation make us more creative? One thing it certainly does is make it more accessible for those who are not so good at drawing. These users can have the computer create the images (such as the standard shape tools in Flash) and they can manipulate and animate them however they wish without much artistic talent. Marc Campbell supports this idea “For all its sophistication, computer animation is essentially a simple procedure” (2003, 6) However, being accessible to all does not necessarily mean more creative, because there are many examples of Flash animations that are of poor quality. Another issue that this raises is what creativity is. Asgeir Hoem in his study of how to be more creative, states “Creativity is a vague term, and is commonly regarded a gift or a talent that can not be learnt.”(2007) So from this we can see it’s not the technology that makes us more or less creative, it’s down to the individual. Furthermore Marcia Kuperberg supports this idea; “the computer is only a tool and the creative force always lies with the artist.” (2002, 10)

On the other hand, using the computer for animation could be vital to for employability in the industry “…whether they work in 2D or 3D, need to keep up with technology to stay employable…The recent technological changes are as significant and radical as those during the 19th century. Cel painting is now extinct and 2D traditional animation is an endangered species.”(Levy, 2006, 46) Comparing the evolution of technologies such as flash to the industrial revolution is an extreme view; because, as stated previously in the essay, the principles of modern 2D animation is based on those of old traditional methods, therefore we could say that elements of traditional animation is present in computer animation, so in effect it really isn’t “extinct”.

Furthermore, the animation software, such as Flash could be a limit to the artists’ creativity; they are constrained by the software. Flash has very basic tools for drawing, and quite often the software’s ‘intuitive’ design is more frustrating that intuitive, for example when you draw a circle and you try to move it, it moves only the outline of the circle and not the whole circle. You could argue that Flash is not designed a drawing program, but in order to animate you need to be able to draw. However, Flash does enable you import images created in other software packages such as Freehand as well as Raster based images as well as incorporating scanned images. So we could say that the software controls the artist to a certain extent, nevertheless, could being constrained by the software encourage creativity; “Web animation is easy to learn but a challenge to master. In some respects, it’s completely flexible. It allows you to mix and match media more easily than any other form of animation. It has its limitations, but they encourage you to be inotive.” (Campbell, 2003, Introduction) So we can see the limitations of the software encourages us to creative, because we have to think of new solutions for problems arising from animating using Flash.

The software is not the only limiting factor for creativity, technology can also limit, such as the internet “There is no way the designer can know what kind of access to their work each individual viewer has (Chapman & Campbell, 2002, 36)

In conclusion the evolution of Flash to a certain extent has given more creative freedom by being opening animation up to more people; however it is also restricted by technology. Nevertheless it is down to the artist for creativity, Flash is just the tool.

References

Campbell, Marc 2003 The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Web Animation, New York

Chapman, Jenny & Campbell, Alastair 2002, www.animation- animation designed for the world wide web New York

Chapman, Jenny & Chapman, Nigel 2004, digital multimedia Chichester, England

Kuperberg, Marcia 2002, A Guide to Computer Animation for TV, games, multimedia and web, Oxford

Levy , David B 2006, Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive, New York

Ye, Ding and Zhan, 2007 ‘Traditional Animation’ http://www.ye-brothers.com/Traditionalanimation.htm (accessed 15th November 2007)