Ask anyone what they think of web animation. They'll probably say they hate it. Sadly, even the word "flash" is associated with those annoying ad banners -- the spam of the web. Extremely primitive and usually without a whiff of artistry, these specimens have led many a surfer to turn off all GIF animations in their browser preferences. Good luck getting these folks to download the Flash plug-in. The real disappointment is, as anyone who marveled at the dancing ostriches in Fantasia knows, animation is the coolest and most unexplored art form on the planet. If a picture's worth a thousand words, what's a Daffy Duck cartoon worth?

There's not a lot of great animated films out there, if you consider the technology's been around for over ninety years. This is largely because animation is such a labor-intensive task. In the old days, if you wanted a mountain in the background of your cartoon,you had to draw that mountain onto each and every sheet of paper. Then a bright fellow named Earl Hurd decided to draw on transparent sheets of celluloid, and technological innovations have been advancing the art ever since. Maybe now that Macromedia's Flash has matured into a serious toolbox for modern animation, we can hope to see this medium emerge from its own dark age.

In version 3 of Flash, Macromedia has successfully leveraged its vector innovations from FreeHand, its multimedia authoring prowess from Director and its web marketing savvy from the Shockwave plug-in. If there were any lingering doubts that Flash was destined for industry standard Shangri-La, version 3 should put them to rest. Foremost in its new featureset is Flash's ability to import and manipulate bitmap images - seamless fades and dissolves are simple to execute, and semitransparent images can run across a bitmap background. Flash can also do morphs (called "shape tweening"" in the manual). Anything in a Flash movie can be a clickable button with predefined mouse-overs. Your buttons will not only do the standard glow effect in response to a mouse-over, either. Imagine a button that becomes a pop-up menu when you point at it. Buttons can launch a URL or send you to any frame in another Flash movie. Another standout feature is the Bandwidth Profiler, which creates a chart of the exact number of bytes consumed by each frame of your movie -- an excellent tool for zeroing in on overweight graphic elements.

Equally impressive are some of Macromedia's machiavellian machinations, designed to help Flash dominate the future of web animation. Flash's proprietary movie format has been declared open to all developers, in hopes of making the format as prevalent as GIF or JPEG. And a special arrangement with Netscape to include the Flash plug-in with future versions of Communicator might be of interest to the U.S. Justice Department.

Macromedia's also been very clever in using the ultimate capitalists' trick - keeping close to its customers, listening to them and learning from them. The company has benefited from making public beta tests available to anyone with the patience to download the software. They also moderate 33 different newsgroups for your tech-info pleasure. A few weeks after Flash 3's debut Macromedia staff were actively soliciting suggestions for Flash 4.

Flash also has one of the nicest online help systems I've seen in a long time. The 200 page printed manual is also available in HTML. Flash movies are used to show how to make Flash movies. There are a series of five tutorials which step you through the process of creating your own cybercinematic masterpiece. The tutorials are designed to let advanced users jump in wherever they please, and there are also some lessons from Flash 2 for the uninitiated. There's a series of sample animations that you can dissect, and a bushel of Flash 2 samples on the CD-ROM. There are also some helpful resources on Macromedia's website at http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ (Not to mention the Flash newsgroup at news://forums.macromedia.com/macromedia.flash).

And you just might need all the help you can get. When you first launch Flash you are greeted with a friendly Mac-like user interface. Don't be fooled. You will soon be navigating lots of dialog boxes. Big dialog boxes that fill your screen with popup menus and radio buttons and those despicable index tabs that Microsoft loves to use. Expect to actually read the manual, and keep it handy.

And another thing. I really wish Macromedia would realize the importance of sound in Flash. Right now, you can only import WAV and AIFF format sounds - standard Mac sound files and QuickTime music will need to be converted elsewhere (use QuickTime Pro or SoundApp). Also, there's very little you can do with your sounds inside Flash -- yeah, you can sync them to a keyframe, loop and fade the volume, but compared to the visual power of this software, this is rather paltry potatoes. The Flash/FreeHand bundle currently being marketed could certainly benefit from the inclusion of SoundEdit 16.

Okay, those are my two major criticisms, the labyrinthine UI and the wimpy sound support. These aside, it's very possible to fall head over heels in love with this software, as the fanatical community of artists who have gathered around it clearly demonstrate. For an eyeful of stunning animation, check out www.flasher.net, where artist Paul Mendigothea has gathered together an active community of "Flashers." Lots of Flash tips and tricks are shared on the web board here. Paul also has an email newsletter for Flash users, appropriately titled Flasher Zine. I would highly recommend subscribing, whether you're a Flash user or if you just like seeing some really great web pages.

Aftershock, which is included with Flash 3, gives you several different ways to sidestep the plug-in bugaboo. Aftershock can process your Flash movie to run as a java applet, a GIF animation or even a standalone application for downloading. Aftershock can write a javascript that will launch any of these options if your visitor's browser doesn't have the Flash plug-in. You can even leave the choice in your visitor's hands. Don't be surprised to find that none of these choices are superior to the plug-in -- they all take too long to download. Still, it's nice to know you won't leave your visitors staring at a broken jigsaw piece.

Now in beta testing is a server-side application called Flash Generator. Generator will allow users to dynamically update their Flash movies based on real time information - so your movie can include today's news headlines or stock prices. At the moment, Macintosh support is limited, however Macromedia has a fairly good track record of simultaneously releasing Windows and Mac versions of new products.

In summary, Flash is really an excellent application, but it needs major renovations to become an intuitive tool for creative minds. To their credit, Macromedia has made lots of help available, but users should prepare themselves for a considerable learning curve before the fun starts. Once over this hump, you will be able to create some pretty awesome stuff, as the links below attest. I can imagine Winsor McCay smiling down on this new crop of animators and welcoming them to the club.

http://www.aristotle.net/july4th/fireworks/index.html
http://utenti.micronet.it/mutabory/garden/garden.html
http://www.gabocorp.com
http://www.matinee.co.uk/

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