Web Flash animation programs have opened new worlds, and better connections, to amateur animators equipped only with a PC and a dreamJapan's multibillion dollar anime industry used to be dominated by a handful of major production companies. For decades, the rapid display of hand-drawn or computer-generated images superimposed on celluloid to create the illusion of animated motion was an intricate and expensive process. If you were an independent animator, you had to have a trust fund or major production company backing, or the odds of breaking in were against you.
Yet today Japan is a country of armchair animators who are shaking up the whole anime studio system. An aspiring animator with a desktop PC, some server capacity, and good working knowledge of multimedia programs such as Adobe Flash (or the Macromedia Flash and Shockwave Player programs) can generate professional animation that instantaneously can reach a global audience.
In Japan, several of these so-called low-budget "flash animators" have landed TV and DVD deals in the last five years or so, as familiarity with these Flash Web programs has improved, and affordable, high-speed broadband has become commonplace.
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