Here’s the Flash animation Scott and I slaved over for many an hour: Stick People

This was my week of learning things that had eluded my grokking them in the past: Flash, regular expressions, the terminal. Animating in Flash proved particularly painful; after struggling for four hours one day we ended up starting over with a much simpler concept, and still spent more than twice that amount of time finishing our project. By Monday night I had become a Flash zombie – animated, but lifeless.

Now, I’m pretty good with learning new software. Once I get a few of the basics down, I can usually figure out what I need to do, even if I do eventually learn that it was the long way around. But Flash runs at perpendicular angles to my brain: layers don’t act like layers in graphics software, and the timeline isn’t like a timeline in video editing software. It probably has to do with Flash’s roots, but it also makes me wonder what Adobe’s interface on the UI will be. (Likely small, as so many people are now used to the Flash way of doing things that it wouldn’t make sense, but this for-once-in-his-life late adopter can hope.)

Okay, enough whining. A full day later, I can say that at least the assignment achieved it’s goal: I now know how to animate in Flash. I understand it’s strange use of layers and symbols, the workflow which runs contrary to my brain, and I have a great appreciation for those who can make beautiful things in it. I also appreciate why it’s so often used for episodic web animation – once you get all your symbols built, it’s fairly quick to assemble things. And the workflow makes total sense for interface design and web design, despite my despise for Flash sites made by people who don’t understand the internet, and the locked-source attitude which runs counter to the development of the internet.

One last thing – though this was hugely painful for me, and I obviously still have some ideological problems with Flash on a fundamental level (both the way the software is designed and the way some people choose to use it), I’m willing to give it a second chance. Actually, I’ll give it two: in the next two months I’ll tackle a short animation again, and at some point in the future I’ll take a crack at ActionScript. If it still feels like licking razor blades, I’m driving a stake through its heart.