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[Editor's note: This review is for Flash Animator version 2.5. Insane Tools has since released a new version and renamed the product to 3D Flash Animator.]
Insane Tools Flash Animator is a vector-based animation program, which means that curved lines are smooth and not jagged. It also, and probably most importantly for the average home user, allows many text effects such as explosion and movement, as well as increasing and decreasing in size, and also the special effects that are produced on Web pages.
The Insane Flash Animator Stage
and toolbox. At bottom right is the timeline.
This program is a user-friendly, beginner's animation software product that can save moving images as a .swf file, which is the same as that used by Macromedia Flash. Even though it is written in DHTML, it outputs animations as a Flash file, and to all intents and purposes behaves in much the same way as Flash. This is not something that users have to worry about as the interface is very pictorial, so programming knowledge is not required.
Insane Flash Animator Pictorial
Toolbox. Each drop down box has more choices.
Colours can be faded in and out, and different actions can be made to play at preset times on your timeline. You are in control of all actions and there are a great many to choose from. These actions can be mixed as well, so you can have text appearing on screen at random, and changing colour as it does so.
Insane Flash Animator Script
and Compression choices.
For the average user, the method of sorting out actions and when to play them, and even whether they are time-based (timeline), or action-based (buttons), or some other trigger, is easily worked out.
