Still from a Xiao Xiao commercial
Welcome! This is another Sunday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, and here’s our slate:
1) On the Xiao Xiao Flash series.
2) Animation newsbits.
A quick note before we start. The newsletter recently passed 60,000 subscribers — a number we can’t believe. Huge thanks to everyone who’s chosen to come along as we look into animation from all over the world.
With that, let’s go!
1 – Stick fights
Before YouTube, TikTok or social media as a whole, there was Flash.
It changed the internet. The Shockwave Flash (.SWF) file format allowed animation and even games to run on dial-up connections. It’s all been retired now — but, in its heyday, web designers everywhere used Flash to make sites feel slick.
There was another group that took to Flash, too: amateur animators. The program was easy to use, and creations with it were easy to share. This caused the first online animation boom. A solo artist with only a home computer could reach millions.
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