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Flash was a great animation tool, a refusal to change left it as a relic of the past
April 17, 2017

Flash was a great animation tool, a refusal to change left it as a relic of the past

Chris Cookson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Flash

It's used primarily as a tool for making ad banners if the kilobyte count is fairly high, otherwise it's used on computers where we don't have a license of ToonBoom Harmony for animation. Harmony is an expensive program and most of the computers here have a license for Adobe Creative Suite so Flash/Animate are fine programs in a pinch but ideally we want something with nicer drawing tools. Usually we get the rough drawings and timing figured out in Flash and then do animation clean-up within Photoshop's timeline tools if Harmony is not available.
  • Easy to learn and get started in.
  • Versatile, it plays nicely between all the programs in the Adobe Suite.
  • A safe environment to learn how to program a game.
  • Drawing tools!! The lines in the brush just look pretty ugly. It would be nice if there was a way to choose between optimizing Flash for online export and to use for video pieces.
  • Program can be unstable and can slow down if you aren't mindful of how you are using it.
  • Many glitches in the program are still present ever since I first started using it nearly 10 years ago.
  • It's good, mostly just use it because it's included in the Adobe Creative Suite but generally not the reason for buying the program. AfterEffects and Photoshop are the main contenders.
  • It was very useful when I first graduated from college in the early 2010s, now most studios moved on to Harmony.
  • Got my first job from Flash, so I am thankful for it.
ToonBoom Harmony has a lot of the compositing stuff from AfterEffects built in and it has much stronger rigging tools than Flash. It's great because it lets you do a mix between both puppeted and animation that is tweaked by hand. However documentation on how to use the program is extremely limited. Photoshop solves a lot of the issues I have with Flash's drawing tools but the actual timeline controls are pretty weak.
It's good if you are just starting out, it's easy to learn and the online community and resources around Flash are strong. I was able to get started animating in high school thanks to communities like Newgrounds. Unfortunately when it comes to more advanced options or professional projects, this is where Flash starts to fall apart. The program needs to break free from its early routes as a tool for web applications and either become a strong hand drawn animation tool or become the definitive environment for CreateJS banners.