Yes, yes, I know there’s far too much animation out there, and it’s all very tacky with Flash sites and the like, but I have a genuine need for it here, or at least a situation were I think it might be appropriate and add genuine interest.
Okay, now that’s over… I have a solid colour, geometric logo that I think would be fun to animate, but I’m not sure which route to take.
I’m pretty new to all this webbery so I thought I’d get some advice. My first thought was to use an animated gif, as I’ve been reading about them and PS CS5.5 has some fantastic new tools for creating and controlling them (also it’s pretty easy to get my head round). Although many people seem to think it a pretty old-fashioned way of doing things, I’m also attracted by the fact that it will work in most browsers and no player is required.
Now my concerns: Well really only that I fear that creating a smooth animation of the required length may require so many individual gifs that it will make for a rather large file.
Being a newb, the only other method that springs to mind is Flash, which I assume (possibly incorrectly) will give me a smaller file size.
My concerns: Everybody seems to hate Flash. Flash requires a player, and support for that player seems to be dwindling. It requires me to learn new software which may well be obsolete in a few years. I may have this wrong, but i get the idea that Flash will eventually be replaced by combinations of open source technology such as HTML5, CSS3 and JS.
So what do people think? Is there anything else I should be looking at?
since the first day I learn website I fell in love in Jquery and CSS, tho flash is fun to learn…but since html 5 and css3 begin to grow…I have no more intention to learn flash…thats just my opinion
You might get a better response asking this in the graphics section.
I have very limited experience of animated gif. (I played about with making them when I first started using GIMP, just for fun.) As I recall, the resulting file size was quite small, so I don’t think you need to worry about that. I’d say go ahead and use gif, rather than a proprietary format like Flash, but that’s just a personal opinion.
I agree with TechnoBear. Animated gifs are quite small (you still Save for Web as usual). And they can be nicely done. You can fade from one state to another etc, and, as long as they are tastefully done, they are a really reliable, well-supported option.
PS: this is a bit cutting-edge (so the file sizes are bigger than usual) but if you want some animated gif inspiration, check out these beauties:
I’m guessing that because your logo is solid color and flat, you won’t need to do any “3-D” animation. Just rotation, fade or scale?
I think animated gif would be good enough for this. Flash has a steeper learning curve than Photoshop, when it comes to animation. Plus you don’t have to worry about iPads and the like that don’t want to play flash. File size would be smaller with flash, but hardly noticeable.
p.s. some of all the flash animation that’s out there is very appropriate and very classy. But I guess it depends on your personal definition of “tacky”.
