In recent times, 3D animation has become quite popular amongst the audience. Flash animation artists are also benefitting from 3D technologies. Earlier, they had to create the same image many times. Furthermore, they had to draw every frame by hand. All these required investment of several hours. Fortunately, the introduction of 3D technologies has simplified the process of creating sketches. It saves time as well.

Has Technology Taken Over Creativity?

Introduction of eye-catching technologies may convince you that creativity is no longer necessary in Flash design and animation. However, this is a wrong concept. Though modern technologies have simplified the animation process, they cannot think creatively. Creativity is the most critical skill of an animator and no amount of advanced technologies can replace it.

With technologies, you can overcome the limitations of creativity. However, you would always require creative ideas.

The Future of 3D Animators

To become a 3D animator, you require an in-depth understanding of various computer programs. In general, you need to know the following.

• Adobe Photoshop
• Autodesk Maya
• Apple Final Cut Pro
• Adobe After Effects
• Apple Soundtrack Pro

In the 21st century, animation artists are in great demand. They can work in movies, television programs, video games, instructional video, and commercials. They can even take up jobs in various NGOs and private sector. Currently, plenty of opportunities exist for 3D animation artists. Even in the future, they can avail various interesting opportunities.

3D animation offers various benefits:

1.    As compared to traditional animation, 3D animation is more engaging. Furthermore, with 3D animation, you can provide characters and scenes with a realistic feeling. Since 3D animation appears more realistic, it is used actively in interior design sketches and medical instructional videos.

2.    Watching 3D animation can be fun. At the same time, it offers useful features. With an attractive mix of style and functionality, 3D animation has earned popularity amongst a global audience.

3.    The major advantage of 3D animation is that it appeals to the aesthetics of the viewers and is functional as well.

With such tremendous potential, it is natural that 3D animation will earn more popularity in the future.

Is Flash Lost?

The answer is: NO. 3D animation is here to stay, but a large number of companies will continue to use Flash design for their websites, ads, banners, presentations. 95% general websites do not need using 3D animation, except if they want to go that extra mile and put-up online presentations using 3D. Even so, the huge load time is usually a problem and most companies do not take that risk.

Also, 3D animation is a specific skill. Not many companies have need for it, unless they are high-end animation studios. So, the demand for Flash is not dead and there’s hope.

The introduction of Silverlight 1.0 and its following versions has sparked a fiery debate amongst web developers and designers. Some believe that as compared to Silverlight, Flash design possesses more interesting and user-friendly features. Others, however, believe in the opposite. To help people to take informed decisions, we discuss the differences between Silverlight and Flash.

1.  Animation

Most people are aware of the fact that Flash utilizes the frame-dependent animation model. This means that we develop a single object for every frame for creating an animation sequence.

Let us assume that you want to shift an object across the screen in 4 seconds. To create the animation sequence, you have to figure out how many frames 4 seconds will require. Thereafter, you have to find out the matrices needed for every frame.

Consider the fact that to allow the player to maintain the frame rate, you have to insert a blank audio track. If you fail to do so, there are high chances that 4 seconds would turn out to be 3 or 7 or 8.

Silverlight, on the other hand, uses the WPF animation model. Since the model is time-based, one can state the start and stop conditions. Unlike Flash, Silverlight discounts the need to handle Matrices. Additionally, you do not have to gauge the location of objects in different frames.

2.  Size of Files

Flash opts for a compressed format, where pictures and content are placed in the movie. For this reason, size of files of a Flash element is comparatively small.

Silverlight utilizes XAML for its description language. It is non-compressed and therefore, size of file of a Silverlight element is comparatively larger.

3.  Accessibility

Flash offers rich accessibility features to people who have vision and hearing difficulties. Video caption feature of Flash solves accessibility difficulties of deaf people. However, people with other disabilities, such as blindness or low vision require video playback controls to use assistive technologies, such as screen magnifiers and readers, properly.

Users who depend on keyboard access can opt for various familiar shortcuts for controlling the video. Buttons, such as ‘Mute’, ‘Rewind’, ‘Stop’, ‘Play/Pause’ can be tabbed to the spacebar.

Silverlight 3.0 is considered the first browser plug-in that allows the user to access all system colors. This means that people who suffer from partial blindness can opt for normal operating system controls for performing necessary actions, such as shifting to high-contrast colors for easy reading.

When it comes to accessibility, Flash offers more features, as compared to Silverlight.

4.  Image Formats

Flash usually supports nearly all image formats. Silverlight, on the other hand, supports JPEG and PBG file formats only.

5.  SEO

A major complaint against Flash website design is that they are not user-friendly. However, recent modifications have allowed search engines (only Google) to index Flash. Google has associated itself with Adobe for simplifying the process of indexing Flash files.

In case of Silverlight, search engines can easily search and index the content that has been developed with the help of Silverlight applications.

Evaluating your requirements will help you to make the perfect choice between Flash and Silverlight. For example, if you think that majority of your visitors use Linux, go for Flash. On the other hand, if you are interested in increasing your rankings, Silverlight would be a better option.

Remember that choosing the proper technology is important for increasing your rankings and conversation rate.

In the 21st century, mobile gaming has become the ‘IT’ thing in most countries. According to a survey conducted by Geekaphone, (a company that provides users information about mobile phones) value of the mobile gaming industry will reach $54 billion within 4 years.

Considering the popularity of mobile gaming, designers are coming up with interesting and user-friendly games. We provide you with some useful tips about developing Flash Lite games.

1. These days, mobile phones are available in different resolutions and screen sizes. To simplify things, select the base build and thereafter, port the game. ‘Base build’ and ‘porting’ are technical terms and therefore, we will explain their meaning.

Base build refers to the specification that the industry follows, while launching a product. Porting indicates the process of modifying the game, according to the requirements of a particular platform.

Why Should You Consider the Base Build and Port the Game?

• The importance of selecting the base build lies in the fact that it will enable you to cover a greater range of handsets. Additionally, it will make porting the game easier.

• Many believe that porting is unnecessary because vector images automatically scale for a larger screen. However, automatic scaling can result in several problems. These can include distortion and pixilation.

2.  If you have created Flash designs in the past, you must already be aware of the fact that user interaction is an important aspect of website design. This is true, in case of mobile gaming as well.

When people press a key on the phone, while playing games, it performs a particular action. People adjust themselves to this particular pattern and therefore, look forward to standard rules of joystick manipulation and key presses. For this reason, providing them with unusual patterns may not be a great idea. Rather, opt for popular navigation systems, while creating mobile games.

3.  If you are associated with a Flash design company in India and have been asked to design a level-based game, you should know the fact that providing users with incentives is critical. This is important because users love to track their progress regularly. Additionally, they prefer to compare their scores against that of other players. Scoreboard is a crucial aspect of mobile gaming because it challenges the user and provides him/her with a sense of achievement.

You can place the scoring system locally on the phone or store it on the global system. If you are creating games for versions above Flash Lite 1.1, opt for shared objects to fulfill this goal. Shared objects maintain scores and track progress, even in the midst of multiple game sessions.

4.  Pixel fonts are perfect for mobile phones. This is because of the fact that as compared to laptops or PCs, mobile screens have limited resolution and color. Since pixel fonts are smaller, they adapt themselves beautifully on mobile phone screens. Furthermore, if you use them in Flash Lite games, they will take up limited space.

If you are planning to choose pixel fonts, consider the following suggestions.

• Do not set the pixel font to the bold style

• Choose Bitmap text as the font rendering procedure.

• Keep the content aligned to the left.

5.  Testing the game is critical. This strategy will ensure that your game does not fall prey to bugs. If possible, test the game on target devices. Of course, a person cannot own every handset of targeted devices. In such a situation, share the content with your family or friends and evaluate the feedback.

If you are already familiar with Flash website designs, you may find the process of creating Flash Lite games easier. Still, you should consider these tips for making your game interesting.

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who click on a site and then leave it, without exploring other pages of the website. High bounce rate indicates that the website has failed to retain the interest of visitors for a long period. We discuss few common reasons that can contribute to a high bounce rate.

1. Loading Issues

Web visitors have short attention span. If your website takes excessive time to load, there are high chances that your visitors will move on to other sites. Factors that usually interfere with loading time can include Flash designs, buffering of videos, and large pictures.

To improve bounce rate of a site, a website design company should pay attention to all these factors.

2. Lack of Good Content

Most people visit sites to find useful information. If your site contains poor quality or duplicate content, it will fail to retain interest of the visitors. To nurture the audience’s curiosity, provide them with valuable content. While incorporating content in your site, consider the following factors.

• Use an attractive headline. Remember that a good title encourages visitors to read rest of the article.

• Provide your audience with relevant and fresh content. Post topics related to latest news and issues.

• Grammar of your articles should be perfect. Correct grammar creates the impression that you possess good knowledge. Readers usually react positively to a well-written article. Ensure that the text of your site has a professional look.

• Web viewers do not have the patience to read huge articles. Therefore, keep your articles short and minimum. Avoid repeating the same information in your articles. Length of the articles should vary between 300-600 words. Do not include slang or abusive words in the text.

• Avoid copying content of other sites at all costs. Post interesting and original ideas. Original content will convince the readers that you are serious about solving their problems and offering useful information.

3. Poor Web Design

Poor website design can contribute to a high bounce rate. Therefore, paying attention to website designing is critical. Ensure that the design is neat and user-friendly. Additionally, consider the following issues.

• Your domain name should be brief. The ideal length of a domain name is 10 characters or less. Additionally, opting for one-word domains can be a great idea. Remember that if viewers have to type a long URL, they may feel frustrated.

• Use a memorable domain name. This will help the users, when they would revisit the site.

• Your domain name should contain words that are easy to spell. If you use words with complicated spellings in your domain name, visitors can land up in any other web page.

• Opt for simple and yet, creative web designs

• To capture interest of the viewers, use an attractive header.

4. Navigation is Important

Navigation can have a strong impact on the bounce rate. Poor navigation will force readers to close your site and explore other sites.

• The navigation system should tell your visitors exactly what to do. This will help them to explore various pages of the website.

• To attract attention of the visitors, highlight the web navigation buttons.

Considering all these issues will help you to lower the bounce rate of your website. Encourage your readers to provide you with feedback. This will help you to understand your flaws and work on them.

Online promotion has become mandatory for many companies. An email newsletter is a direct medium of communication. It reaches the target audience’s inbox and conveys your message individually. Compared to online banner ads, email newsletters get more attention because we generally read mails we receive in our inboxes. An email newsletter can help you to make people aware of your service and convert a casual visitor into a regular customer.

However, to make a newsletter appealing, you should focus on its graphic design and layout factors. Here are some of the most important designing factors that can make your email newsletter a successful medium of communication and promotion.

Have a clear focus- When you design a newsletter, plan its purpose in your mind and make sure that your newsletter design reflects that purpose successfully. Your email newsletter can inform your target audience about your existence, a discount sale, subscription or anything else you think is important for your business. Whatever the purpose, the design should inspire the customer to take an action.

Simple design- Don’t complicate the design with unnecessary images or text. People spend only a few seconds reading an email newsletter. They don’t even read the whole thing, only scan the main portions. A simple and clean newsletter design conveys the message more effectively. Content should be short and descriptive so that readers can get the message instantly.

Use tables- Using tables in the newsletter design is a good idea. Tables offer visual harmony. It keeps the newsletter organized and all the elements in the newsletter are displayed properly.

Use minimum images- When you check newsletters in your mail, you must have noticed that images are not displayed until you give permission for the same. Gmail strictly follows this rule. So does Rediffmail.

If an image-heavy email newsletter comes to the inbox, Google asks users whether images should be displayed or not. If the recipient declines to view the image, the main purpose of that newsletter is failed. For that reason, use only a few images in the newsletter, like your logo, banner, or product image. An image rich newsletter looks great, but when the recipients receive it, they see a blank page.

Never use video or animation- Just like images, video and animation look attractive but not useful for newsletter design. If you want to use animation, then use it in the website design of your site. Nobody likes to download Flash player just to see a Flash design in your newsletter. Most of the backdated browsers don’t even support video streaming or animation.

Emphasize on “call to action” button- The main purpose of sending a newsletter is to urge the customers to click on the call-to-action button. Give the message clearly and direct them to the call-to-action button. Make the call-to-action button large and clearly visible. The button should describe the action you want the customers to take. For example, your call-to-action button can show, “subscribe now”, “join us”, “get flat 50% discount”, etc.

Link to web version- Sometimes, newsletters don’t view properly in the inbox when users click on it. It’s not the designers fault. Sometimes older version of browsers don’t support modern newsletter formats. The wise thing to do is to add a link to the web version of the newsletter. Users can click on the link and see the newsletter without any problems.

Portable device optimization- While designing a newsletter for promotional purposes, try to optimize it for smartphones and tablets. More and more people are accessing their inboxes from their portable devices. If your newsletter does not support these devices, your marketing campaign can be a failure.

Email newsletter is one of the most affordable and useful weapon for online marketing. Without marketing and promotion, even the best companies cannot earn profits. Email newsletters are extremely effective and result oriented, if used properly.

Lets face it. Flash sites are heavy and they take time to load all its content that may include sound, animation, text, video and so on and that simply means, it requires a good deal of patience from the viewers. However, it is your moral responsibility to inform the visitors how much time is actually left to get the website design components loaded completely. Previously, website designers usually feature a clock or something of that kind to inform the readers but time has changed and so are the visitors. Visitors are no longer interested in watching a watch clicking. They are now looking for something more interesting and engaging. And the only way, you will be able to make intro of your website interesting is by adding a fascinating flash preloaders that are powerful enough to give your flash site a facelift.

Do They Serve Any Purpose: Yes of course. Besides adding a startling visual twist to your flash website, they serve an aesthetic purpose. If you can make it look interesting, it quells the urge of closing the window and this is exactly what you need the most. Use of growing bar, percentage value or incrementing counters are passé. You need to make it look different so that viewers do not lose their focus while your site is getting loaded in the background. A boring look of flash preloader can serve as a deathbed to your marketing campaign.

Now, if you are running short of creative ideas, just check out some of the best flash preloaders to get some creative nourishment:

Water Filling Flash Preloader: – The approach is mind blowing. Though the concept though not novel, it is still good enough to keep the viewers engaged by creating a suspense. The structure of the design is something to take note of.

A Smooth Flash Preloader: This flash preloader is mainly aimed at its consumers who are looking forward to healthily nutritious collections of smoothies. This flash preloader goes perfectly with the theme and the animation is good enough for retaining the interest of the viewers.

Flash Preloader With Numbers: – This preloader is starkly different from the rest of other of its clan since its numbers do not give any ideal of the loading time but the animation is dame good to keep you hooked on to it until the very end. The cleaver use of numbers is the in thing of this animation that you can hardly ignore.

Flash Preloader With A Smile: – Say hello to happiness with this amazingly designed flash preloader that will certainly give enough reasons to smile. Though it takes time, it really worth it. It does not have any grand animation and it mainly rides on its simple message and interface which is a good riddance from the others clumsy and over-crowded flash preloaders.

Simplicity At Its Best: This is what you may term as super simple. However, we found it too simple to keep the attention of the viewers for a long. We believe that this flash preloader is seriously lacking a creative touch.

If a site is successful to create good visual impact on the mind of the visitors then it can fetch good online traffic. Among many things, attractiveness of a website design is an important factor to increase its popularity. To make a site appear visually attractive, a web designer needs to be both creative and skilled at handling web designing tools. Understanding the purpose of launching the site and its target market is also required before planning the site design.

Flash web design is an effective way to make your site appear attractive. With flash you can make your site livelier and much more interesting to the online visitors. To enhance the look and feel of your site you can use this application. Here are some basic tips of flash web design: Continue reading ‘Enhance Look of your Website with Flash Designing’ »

A company sets up its visual interface with help of a website. In today’s hi-tech world, a site acts as a virtual platform for business transactions and business promotion. So it is very much necessary to devote your time in designing a site as the prospect of business of an organization often depends on it. The visual effects, management of content, color combination etc are to be taken in account for a site designing. The more attractive a site is, it is bound to fetch more traffic.

If it has to do with the appearance of a site then it can be made visually pleasing to the visitors with the use of flash based techniques. But just look and feel of a site will not improve the business prospects of a site. The site is also required to provide authentic and resourceful content. A site has to be user friendly and at the same time well designed. Continue reading ‘Solutions for Flash Based Web Designs’ »

To get noticed by the search engine crawlers, you need to make your sites search engine friendly. It is possible when you optimize your site for all the major search engines. The benefits of optimizing a site in the proper way can fetch good ranking on the search engine result pages. But earlier it was often seen that flash based websites do not get good ranking in spite they have good content and well optimized.

But nowadays the search engine spiders can crawl the flash based designs on a site. Taking the full advantage of this advancement, we can optimize the flash features used in a site. But it is not an easy task as it sounds. Flash application is quite complex and if you want to incorporate flash technology in your site, make sure to take assistance from professionals. Continue reading ‘Benefits of Optimizing Flash Based Sites’ »

Websites are being developed and launched for building up a strong communication with the viewers for promoting the services of their respective companies. With the stupendous development in the field of technology, the concept of website design has undergone a massive transformation. New technologies are being developed and introduced in this domain to for making a website more interesting, user-friendly, enticing and search engine-friendly. Flash is one of those technologies, which has created a furor in this domain as it can add interactivity in a website. However, there are some misgivings linked with flash design, which have debarred some people from adding flash banner or flash intro in their website. Here in this article we will try to dissipate some of these misgivings as far as possible.

Flash Is Not Bad From SEO Point of View
Flash website possesses the power to deliver the message of an organization skillfully to its targeted audience by utilizing its interactive nature. If it can be used properly, it can increase conversion rate dramatically. Previously search engine robot could not read flash file properly. This was considered to be the major drawback of flash website. Previously, search engine robot could only index files name of the flash sites and not the content embedded in it. But now, search engine can index the content of the flash files which has improved the online visibility of flash website like never before. Continue reading ‘Incorporating Flash In Website Design’ »