Question about Flash animations

Factual Questions
1

Can anyone tell me what program is used to make Flash cartoons like Homestar Runner?

2

There are several, but the one I personally use is called SWiSH. You can download the free trial version from that link.

3

Macromedia Flash is what I use.

4

If anyone is still reading this thread (its been about a week since my last visit here), here’s a helpful trick for you:

If you are watching any of these Flash cartoons, you can right-click your mouse button (or command-click if you are on a Mac) and a menu will pop up. Some of the menu commands may or may not be disabled by the author of the cartoon, but the bottom one is always “About Flash Player…”

Click that menu item and you will be taken to Macromedia’s page about the Flash Player, which itself has links to information about the program itself.

I don’t know what you’ll get if it is a program other than Flash, but I’m sure 98% of the time it is a Flash creation. If you are not sure, this right-click method will tell you for sure.

5

You’ll get directed to the Macromedia site regardless of the program that was used to create the flash animation, because the right-click menu is a feature of the browser plug-in, which is made by Macromedia - there might be other flash player plug-ins out there, but auto-installation (i.e. when you visit a flash-based website for the first time) seems to favour the Macromedia plug-in.

6

I thought Flash was Macromedia’s proprietary name for it’s computer-animation program. I notice SWiSH says it’s for “Flash creation” (with a capital F). Is any web-based animation called flash? Or Flash? Is this because it will play on a Flash Player, no matter what animation software was used? I’m so confused.

7

Yes; Flash is a distinct type of web animation (and probably the most common), created by Macromedia. Other programs can create Flash animations in the same sort of way that (for example) non-Microsoft word processing applications can save documents in MS Word format.

8
      • Macromedia’s program is “the big one” now. There’s a few smaller programs with less features and lower prices. A year or two ago Adobe used to have a program called LiveMotion for doing “interactive” Flash that still works well enough if you can score a copy.
  • If you want to do non-interactive Flash cartoon-style animation (where the end product is just a movie that plays through like a video file) then two programs are Animation Stand (there’s a small-format free version download-able) and ToonBoomStudio (not free). These pay versions are not cheap, but they are specifically geared towards doing cartoon-type animation, with different tools and methods for that purpose that the “web-content” software doesn’t have.
    ~