Flash Animation – A Balancing Act
The boom of flash animation industry is not a fluke rather; it is the result of painstaking efforts of some of the leading flash developers and animators, who are still toiling hard for increasing its efficiency and for making it more attractive. An animation in flash has to be powerful enough to capture and convert designer’s imagination into perfect shape without increasing the size of the SWF files. Here lies the importance of maintaining a perfect balance. You should not kill the creative muse deliberately for the sake of reducing the loading time of a website rather; you should find out a solution to unleash your creative inputs either by weeding out unnecessary elements or by using latest technology to downsize the file of flash animation.
Challenges of Flash Animation
Creation of an animation in flash is not a cakewalk. It involves a complex process where creativity, professional knowledge and practical experience are all woven together for generating the best possible output. However, web industry is cruel. It gives little chance to a flash designer to unfurl his creativity at his will because it does not support high bandwidth, standard resolution and large screen all the time. So the only way you will be able to survive in this competitive industry is by coping with its challenging climate. Here are some issues that you should consider with care before your start your encounter with animation industry:
* Beware of Video Files: Do not make big plans with video files because things can go horribly wrong if the video starts buffering or connection conks off all of a sudden. Just make it simple by using some simple image or you can try gif images alternatively.
* Make It Light: For God’s sake do not increase the sizes of flash files by adding loads of images and texts unnecessarily. Do remember that the basic objective of making an animation is to make it attractive and transmit the message of an organization through a unique visual medium. So make it simple and make it light as far as possible. If it takes awfully long to time to load, it will eventually spoil the online reputation and will act as a deterrent in the growth trajectory of your organization.
* Make It Search Engine Friendly: The basic purpose of flash design or flash animation is to make a website user friendly. However, you should not discard the concept of search engine optimization all together. Just deter yourself from using any kind of junk codes or Java Scripts because most of the crawlers of search engine cannot index them properly. You should use text in the animation process because search engine crawlers are now powerful enough to index them.
* Follow The Trend: This is extremely important. Without following the trend you will never be able to seize the attention of the viewers. Online viewers are no longer gullible and therefore, you have to make sure that your animation is potent enough to make them stick to your animation until the very end.
Success is always elusive in the domain of flash design, to be more precise in the sphere of flash animation, but if you can manage to maintain a fine balance in the process, you will definitely make a difference in the long run.