movies/tv Flash Animation - The motion controls of cartoons?

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

Motion controls have been very.... love it or hate it among the gaming community. I personally love them, they can be satisfying and disverse when put in the right hands. Say what you want about the Wiimote, but at the end of the day, it's meerly a tool. It's the developers job to use it effectively and while several did, many just half-assed. 

 

This brings me to flash animation. Flash has many similarities to motion controls. First, not every show can pull it off, it has a love or hate reputation, and things can get ugly when in the wrong hands. In the right hands, flash is awesome. It allows for a lot more fluidity and expression that tradional hand-drawn TV animation can only dream of replicating. Plus, it allows for the creation of complex shapes to be done in a much quicker fashion. But that's only if you put it in the right hands. In the wrong hands, you get souless garbage like Johnny Test. 

 

So that's just it, lesson it don't blame the tool, blame the artist using it. With that said, what do you think, is flash the motion controls of animation?

[colt_following 169]

oh dear. I was thinking Johnny Test and you said it!

i can certainly see your comparison... plus I can't really think of something that fits better.

[Saylor Scout 66]

Johnny Test

DON'T YOU DARE SPEAK THAT NAME. 

[Grumpy Enchantress 587]

It allows for a lot more fluidity and expression that tradional hand-drawn TV animation can only dream of replicating. 

Assuming by "Flash" you mean "symbol animation", it's inherently more limited to real animation and will always look worse and less fluent. It's not horrible, but it can't do things that real animation can only dream of, it's the other way around to me.

 

If by Flash, you're just talking about the program, yeah, you can do a lot with it and make really great animation. Anything you can do with traditional cels, you can do with Flash.

 

I'd even go so far as to say that symbols can be used as an effective tool for certain elements and stuff and make the objects better, but they're going to be less fluent overall unless you only use them rarely. Animation always looks better when it's drawn frame-by-frame. It allows for more fluidity and expression.

 

MLP looks alright for symbol animation, but I think it's far inferior to what real animation can do. I definitely prefer to see something somebody actually drew frame-by-frame to seeing copies of drawings repeated over and over. No offense to symbol animators or anything, though, it still can look alright, I just don't think it can ever look as good as full animation.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Grumpy Enchantress

[Megas 28,138]

Pretty interesting analogy, and I can't say I disagree either, though I don't think Flash is as hated as motion controls. But with that said, both flash and motion controls, much like anything else, can be done well as long as it's handled correctly. 

 

Metroid Prime Trilogy, Skyward Sword, and No More Heroes are good examples of well done motion controls while bad examples include Star Wars Kinect, Wii Play, and any shovelware game on the Wii/Kinect

 

Likewise FiM and Motorcity are good examples of great flash animation while Johnny Test, 6Teen, Problem Solverz, etc just makes me want to throw up

[Cirrus. 1,093]

Noticing that MLP was done in Flash is one of the first things that interested me about the show. It's one of the best works in Flash I've seen to date.

 

I love how it doesn't look "South Park-ish" or worse, like a lot of other Flash cartoons do.

 

I've worked with Flash in the past and have an understanding of how it all works, so I can appreciate the extra effort that goes into MLP even more.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Cirrus.

[Grumpy Enchantress 587]

Another thing I'll say about your comparison is that motion controls can make the game different for the better, it actually has the ability to improve a game. Symbol animation doesn't ever add anything, only takes it away. It takes away scene specific drawings, expressions, angles, and fluidity. I strongly disagree with the idea that it can do anything that traditional animation can only dream of.

The movements of a a Flash puppet just can't look as good as the movements of a character drawn frame-by-frame. A character can control just as well in a motion controlled game if it's well done, though.

Compare MLP to a classic Disney movie or an old Looney Tunes cartoon. It's vastly inferior, because symbols are just in capable of so much inherently. MLP is about as good as symbol animation can get and it just isn't very impressive looking. It certainly doesn't ever do anything that traditional animation can't do a million times better.

 

Although, I'm still not clear if by Flash you mean the program or what is typically known as "Flash animation" as in puppets. I think traditional animation can be done really well on Flash.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Grumpy Enchantress