Flash in a Flash
Last March I got a call from a feature film production company I occasionally work for. The folks there wanted to produce several animated shorts for a Web site, and they wanted them done in six weeks. Each animation would be approximately one minute long and was to tell the story of a popular invention using voice-over, images, music, and sound effects. A year ago I would have said it wasn’t possible but today, with so many stock media companies making their goods instantly available online, I said yes.
Why Flash?
As any Web producer knows, getting moving images on the Web involves a series of compromises. Our clients initially wanted QuickTime or RealVideo clips but they didn’t want the big download times or jerky playback that comes with those formats when viewed over slower-than-DSL connections. After much debate we decided to create these animations in the Flash 4 format. Users with 56K modems would experience a 30-to-180-second download but would get smooth playback of the animation in return. The client also wanted a voice-over narration to tell each story, so the streaming audio that Flash 4 offers was a necessity. The new Flash 5 software allows either the Flash 4 format and the new Flash 5 format when exporting Flash player files. We decided to stick with the Flash 4 format.
After we determined that Flash 4 was the ticket, it was time to figure out how to create the visual content. Because the project was originally envisioned as a bunch of mini-documentaries, we decided that a slide show of photographs could tell the story, much like an episode of A&E Biography. Although our original budget included shooting digital stills and video, we immediately realized that stock images were the key to a quick turnaround. There are generally two types of stock photos available online: royalty-free and licensed. Royalty-free images are usually purchased for a flat-rate, for use in any sort of project and for an unlimited time. With licensed images, the prices are determined by the type of usage; the length of time the images will be used; whether or not royalty payments are made to a photographer, model, or other entity; and sometimes other criteria, depending on the vendor. Because they cost more and take longer to purchase, we tried to avoid any sort of licensed image although we did spring for a few “money shots.”
Navigating the Stock Media Jungle
Our biggest resource for photos was Corbis. Its huge selection of royalty-free images is immediately available after a quick registration process. The price structuring is based on image resolution, which means you’re in luck if you’re using the photos for a Web site. Only $20 buys you a 2MB image and access to downloading it for a year — a boon if you’re working with off-site freelancers. Especially useful for us was the Corbis Objects collection, which features objects and actors in costume against plain white backgrounds. Corbis, like most other stock media suppliers, also offers these images as parts of CD collections that cost between $150 and $300. In our case, the variety of images that we needed was so great that no single CD was worth purchasing.
Corbis may be the among the largest stock houses out there, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stock media. Eyewire deserves acclaim for its variety of media and its consistency in offering single file downloads. Both Eyewire (with photos starting at $24.95) and PhotoDisc (with photos starting at $29.95) are great resources for historical artwork such as paintings, illustrations, and etchings. Westock also has a nice selection of modern and historical photos, including the one of the train in the example below, but at $50 each for professional Web use, the bills can add up quickly. Artville is a good place to look for more abstract concepts, with its collection of photos (starting at $24.95) and modern illustrations (starting at $79.95). FotoSearch has lots of CD collections for sale, including the very reasonably priced MetaPhotos collection ($49.95 per CD). The Image Bank offers a huge selection of high-quality modern photos, but like the Corbis licensed collection the price is negotiated based on the intended use of the image. We found its prices, in general, to be too high for our budget.
Bitmaps? In Flash?!?
At this point you’re probably wondering why we were even bothering to use bitmapped images in vector-oriented Flash. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, Flash can handle bitmaps fairly well if they’re used carefully. Avoid long dissolves and slow moves unless you can make the resulting jerkiness look like it belongs there, as in the animated train above. For this effect, the animator took a stock photo and separated the train from the background in Photoshop. The two layers were then imported into Flash to create the final animation. In this case, the rather poor handling of bitmapped images in Flash becomes an asset, and the resulting jerky motion makes it look like an old film.
If you’re not happy with the way your bitmaps look in Flash, you can always turn them into vectors. The Trace Bitmap command in Flash offers a powerful tool for converting bitmaps to vectors, but beware: The resulting vector-based image might be so complex that Flash will have even more trouble handling it that it did the original, bitmapped version. The trace bitmap feature can also make an ordinary photo look like a cartoon image or an Impressionist painting, depending on the level of detail you select.
Parts is Parts
As we worked on the project we started to branch out into different kinds of stock media, and we realized that a little visual manipulation goes a long way. By creatively combining and manipulating stock photos and clip art, you can end up with something that looks like original artwork. In the animation of the cat skidding on an frozen litter box above, we combined six images: a gray background layer created in Flash, a transparent background texture layer, a traced photograph of a litter box from Corbis, a layer of icicles created by the animator in Photoshop, a layer of transparent blue ice created in Flash, and the layer of the cat, created in Flash using clip art from ArtParts. Although some work in Photoshop is a necessity when working with bitmapped images, we found that doing as much of the image manipulation as possible in Flash’s Symbol Editor was the fastest way to work. Staying “inside” Flash saves you the time and trouble of keeping track of a large number of graphics files and the requisite importing and exporting. You can create an object or character in the Symbol Editor, drop it into your timeline to see if it works, then pop back into the Symbol Editor and change it instantly and globally.
The beauty of using clip art in Flash is threefold: There are many different styles available, it’s cheap, and it’s vector-based. Then, too, it’s very easy to colorize and manipulate clip art in the Flash Symbol Editor. Eyewire is a great source for vector-based clip art from many different companies, and you can download individual files starting at around $10. FORdesigners sells lots of dingbat fonts that can often take the place of clip art, such as in the animation below. Some collections, like ArtParts’ WebParts CD, have begun selling animated clip art created in Flash.
Using Video with Flash
You can also use motion video or film footage in your Flash file if you keep it to a minimum. Try to use very short video clips at lower frame rates, like the clip of clouds from Eyewire shown below. As with photos and clip art, at Eyewire you can purchase a CD with broadcast quality NTSC or PAL QuickTime video shot on 35mm film (starting around $350) or download single clips starting at $24.99 for 160-by-120 QuickTime movies. The Art Beats Digital Film Library is another extensive, high-quality collection and costs about $150 for a single download and $500 for a CD. To use motion video in Flash you’ll have to save the QuickTime video as sequential JPEGs and then import them as a sequence of frames. Flash will treat each frame as a separate bitmap, so if you have too many frames your Flash file will become huge.
Sound: Effective
The key to creating successful animation often lies in the soundtrack, and luckily there are a growing number of audio suppliers available online. We bought our music from SoundDogs. Using its proprietary Sound Machine plug-in, you can download sounds and music in the .AIFF audio format and import them into Flash. Music can be one of the most expensive things in a production but at SoundDogs, you usually pay less than $10 per minute. As for sound effects, SoundDogs, Eyewire, and others sell these as well, or you can purchase one of the many CD collections available. The prices of different CD collections vary greatly, but if you have future projects up your sleeve, a good sound effects library is a worthwhile investment.
That’s a Wrap
When we did the original budget for this project, we didn’t know if the stock media world could supply us with the sort of content we needed to make unique, interesting stories that didn’t feel like a corporate slide show. Take a look at some of our final animations to judge for yourself how it all turned out. Each animation was created by an artist/animator in less than a week, with a stock footage budget of about $600 per animation, including the music. We were more than pleased with the results.
Read more by Sonja Schenk.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on November 1, 2000
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