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I would love to see something with a Flash-like UI. I'm not sure if there is a place for it in the middle-school market anymore, though. I'll explain why: I th
by l_t 7y ago
I would love to see something with a Flash-like UI. I'm not sure if there is a place for it in the middle-school market anymore, though. I'll explain why:
I think an interesting part of my experience was that it started with watching. I just loved the videos and thought they were hilarious. I admired the people who made those videos and I wanted to join that circle of creators. And Flash didn't prevent me from doing that. Not only that, but it was a specific low-effort style of animation. The path from consumer -> producer was short.
So really, I think you have to look at what people are consuming, and then try and make it easy for them to "participate." I'm not sure if people are consuming Flash-style animations anymore. (Maybe they are, and I just aged out of the demographic.)
It seems like a lot of that creative energy has moved to sandbox games like Minecraft for now, where that community of creators and would-be creators still exists, and away from animation and Web design.
- KhoomeiK 7y agoThat's an interesting way to look at it. I know the Minecraft era definitely had its equivalent code-related fanbase who'd make plugins and mods in Java. The age of Minecraft has also faded away though (besides the most recent Pewdiepie revival) and I'm not sure Fortnite or the other shooter games of today have a programmatic side.
- erklik 7y agoFortnite defintely doesn't AFAIK, and their nature as a multiplayer game invites competition, and therefore, cheating making it important for the developer to actually de incentivize modding. I am very disappointed that modding of famous games is going down honestly.
- l_t 7y agoWith Minecraft, even just watching a Youtube video and copying their build-style to make something cool is enough for a kid to learn that they can be a creator. They realize that there's no magic; all it takes to make something nice is a little knowledge, and a lot of work. From what I've seen of Fortnite, it promotes a different kind of creativity, which is more like creative problem solving (boxing people in, riding rockets, etc.) But it does have a sandbox mode that I've seen some interesting creations from.
- detaro 7y agoI think the place of animations might also been taken by video now. Back then, there were no ubiquitous video cameras and apps around them. Now, everyone can start making and sharing video clips with overlays/music/...
- tensafefrogs 7y agoTotally agree. The creativity is still there, it just shifted to the latest medium that's easily available. Nobody could make cheap quick videos back before iphones and certainly couldn't view them easily on the web until YouTube came along. And on that point it seems that Flash helped to kill itself by accelerating ubiquitous web video.
- wongarsu 7y agoFlash as an authoring tool is very much alive; Hasbro's infamous My Little Pony tv series is animated in Flash, to give a random example. It's a great animation tool with a great learning curve, I'm surprised Adobe isn't doing more to get it in the hands of teenagers^w young creators.
- majewsky 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis...
- Animats 7y agoI would love to see something with a Flash-like UI. The 2D GUIs of many 3D games were written in Flash. There are non-Adobe Flash players which can be embedded. The advantage was the authoring tools - the GUIs could be elaborate and graphical without much effort.
- whywhywhywhy 7y agoIt's funny, I worked so intimately with Flash in my day job that I clocked this before I even knew the tech (Scaleform?) existed because badly made Flash content has a certain jankiness to it that I recognized instantly. The Borderlands 2 menu system comes to mind in particular.