Page 8 —
Done in a Flash. Finally.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with the end result, which clocked in at less
than 60 KB. But you can definitely see that some corners were cut when you
compare the Flash animation to the original. For instance, when Joe falls
down in the original animation, the cartoon stars pop one by one, whereas I
had them disappear simultaneously. There are also some mini-mistakes. If
you look closely, you'll see that Joe's children symbols overlap in one or
two places and you might spot the occasional articulative element that's
just a pixel or two off. Then there's the soundtrack, which has been
whittled down to audio nubbins in the Flash version. Still, it's more or
less true to the original, and its miniscule file size is a testament to the Flash technology.
Fortunately, Spike and Mike were also happy with the "No Neck Joe" Flash animation. Which is good, because if they weren't, all that work would have been for nothing. But even if that were the case, I still would have considered the experience invaluable. Not only did I get to dirty my hands with the technology, I also had the opportunity to see how a really great animation is put together. I urge anybody who has an interest in Flash animation to go through the conversion process at least once. Which may be all you can stomach.
