Animation on the Web: this new frontier is fertile ground for animators

Post, Sept, 2005 by Ann Fisher

Mere words do not do justice to some of the more irrepressible animations on the Web. They will make you laugh, they will make you take notice, they will leave you speechless, and they might even make you think. Animations on the Web, still primarily created with Macromedia Flash MX2004, are used as calling cards, games, ads, or to support existing sites. The production challenge pushes Flash and unleashes other tools with unorthodox usage. The distribution challenge focuses on something viral, what used to be known as buzz, to help build and retain viewers. The creative challenge of attracting attention demands strong stories and characters since it's a different medium and type of storytelling than traditional television and :30 ads.

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

"On the production side, the challenges are how can you use the tools that are out there in fresh and exciting ways because we've all seen very bad Flash animation," says Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder with brother Evan of Santa Monica-based JibJab (www.jibjab.net) and co-director of the election year political spoof This Land. "That's what a lot of people associate with Flash animation. So, based on what the creative is, how can you use Flash and the other Web tools that are out there to amplify or best serve the creative?" For us we're doing a number of new styles to keep pushing the production values. This next piece we're doing, we're actually integrating live action video with animation, so that was a new challenge, greenscreening and putting all that composited video into Flash and keeping it small enough to use on the Web."

He refers to an actual series of 1:30-to-two-minute pieces on the Budweiser (www.budweiser.-com) and JibJab sites. The first went up in May, another will be up by summer's end. Others will be added through December. The partnership is based on Budweiser themes that JibJab animators use as a creative starting point. It's a plum job to be working with this beer company, which has pioneered innovative ads, particularly funny ones, in all mediums from radio to television to print to onsite promotions to the Internet, says Spiridellis.

Flash is the main production tool and, while the animators push it, they know the boundaries before production starts. For Matzah!, a 1:30 minute Passover hip-hip rap released this past spring with Atom Films, JibJab integrated 3D backgrounds done in Adobe After Effects with their collage character animation done in Flash. For the current Bud pieces, they're doing a lot of Flash video. First, they did a huge greenscreen shoot with lots of actors, then composited out the greenscreen and put in Photoshop backgrounds with character animations done in Flash with live action video.

"The challenge when you start integrating different tools and live action and animation is you can't see the product all along, it comes together at the end," he says. "But it's still amazing that the technology is there to do these things with a limited amount of investment and equipment. It just makes the artist that much more king of the roost. It's not like who's the guy with the most expensive Avid, it's who has the best ideas and can be the most innovative in how they use the tools? Our computers are $3,000 Mac G5s and we have $400 software on them, and we're off to the races."

He adds, "On the distribution side, the challenge is unlike television where you have a distribution channel into X million homes," he adds. "On the Web you really need to rely on the pass-along of viewers so it goes full circle and ties to content--can you create compelling enough stories that people are going to want to share with their friends? We keep pushing on it, that's the model.

"For us it's making sure our audience--we have a very big mailing list--grows [so] it's a little easier to get your next piece out there. When we started five years ago we had no one on our list. When we did This Land we had 160,000 and now we're up to 550,000."

JibJab's business model has always been to create original entertainment, but they knew that corporate clients would pay the bills. The cycle works for them--their original pieces attract ad jobs which pay for more original projects. Future ones include a pilot presentation for television and feature film concepts.

ANIMATED BIRTH CONTROL

New York's FlickerLab (www.flickerlab.com) created the pregnancy PSA for Planned Parenthood (www.plannedparenthood.org, click on Health Info, then Pregnancy) with characters made from, well, um, genitalia. Writing a script that balanced information, humor and political considerations was certainly a challenge, says Harold Moss, Flicker-Lab director/founder, as was the character design of Peter and Mina, whose imagery borders on over-the-top. Moss is no stranger to controversy, having created the animated cartoon in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Web projects are a small part of the mix for this full service animation and design house that does broadcast and film, and has its own in-house sound design and recording studio. FlickerLab also uses Flash for broadcast animation. Moss says it's a great drawing tool, is very fast to work with and it produces great looking results.