2D Animation is definitely not dead!

I read a great blog post the other day by Tara Peak from Curveball Media. I couldn't agree more with her sentiments within her post! Take a look at it, it makes interesting reading: 2d animation isn't dead. 

2D animation is still definitely alive in Japanese anime! Studio Ghibli still create 2D films, and it is definitely alive within TV and online advertising, animated info graphics and 2D games! The area where it is no longer used is in Disney films and Western animated films in general, but it is still alive within so many other areas. 

I recently attended a couple of screenings of the British Animation Awards, public vote at the Regent Street Cinema, London and there was a great variety of animations screened including lots of 2D, along with stop motion, mixed media and 3D. I enjoyed The Evening Her Mind Jumped Out Of Her Head by Shaun Clark and Kim Noce, Weather the Storm by Benjamin Sheuer and Stromae: Carmen by Sylvain Chomet, to name a few.

Stromae: Carmen by Sylvain Chomet

I think 2D is having a revival and I happy to witness this. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate all types of animation, but I am tired of hearing that 2D is dead, I think we can categorically say this is not the case!

Big upgrade for Adobe Flash!

I first read about the update to Flash on the Angry Animators website and I must admit to having a bit of panic when reading his headline RIP Adobe Flash.... Thankfully on reading on, it shouldn't be as bad as it sounds. If Adobe gets this right, there will be a lot of grateful animators out there! I am a bit scared that they could get it wrong, but this is me being a pessimist. I do have my reasons as I used to love Adobe Soundbooth it was a great sound editing programme... straightforward to use and edit in, but Adobe changed it to Audition which I do use, but it is in no way as user friendly as Soundbooth was. I really hope they don't do this with Flash.... or should I say 'Animate'.

There is going to be a name change - Flash will now be Adobe Animate CC - I really do hope that they focus on what animators really need and reflect on the new name!

It was hard to take when they upgraded Flash CS6 and they took away things that we were getting used to using, it seemed crazy that an upgrade came with less features than the old version?!? It is also quite annoying that when you import video to create some rotoscoping effects that you have to import an flv to embed into the timeline but that you cannot convert .movs to flv's in the Adobe Media Encoder! I really hope this is updated with the new version.

Below is a video from Adobe.com, discussing some of the new updates - nothing here to get too excited about apart from being able to import brushes.... that is long overdue I think.

Well, the update is supposed to be happening soon so we will wait in anticipation for what happens with the re-birth of good old Flash. It has its short comings but I teach it to my animation students and its a great platform to start learning 2D digital animation. You can do frame by frame, 2D rigging and rotoscope which are all the skills you need to learn at the beginning of an animation education.

Take from: http://www.angryanimator.com/word/ 

I love the illustration above - I borrowed it from Angry Animator because it illustrates the frustration of learning and creating animation :)