Flash Animation

Animated conversation Developing decent web animations has been more like a climb up the Eiger than a walk in the park. However, the latest breed of software available has been built to capture the designer's imagination without killing off the muse. Alistair Dabbs goes through the motions.

Let's face it, the Web is a disappointment. It's that tiny little screen, the narrow bandwidth and the uncertainty that vast numbers of your audience might not be able to see what you want them to. Everything to do with Web design is about downsizing. And if it wasn't bad enough having to make all your static graphics 72dpi, any attempt at animation involves considerable cramming effort. What this means, at least until large screens and fast Internet connections become the norm, is you can't yet do much with video. You can stream QuickTime, but without a leased line connection it's terrible. Thankfully, you still have a range of choices when it comes to graphics animation. So, let's take a look at the main techniques, and their drawbacks, for getting your site animated today.

In the beginning

Back in 1994, the backroom boys in commercial Web development came up with an extremely basic form of animation by sending consecutive GIF images live to the browser. Advertisers had been using this method to change ad banners every 30 seconds or so without waiting for the user to refresh the page. By sending a sequence of frames on a constant basis, an elementary animation effect was possible. The drawback, of course, was that graphic data was constantly being downloaded over the line after the page itself had loaded.

On a 14.4K modem, this meant the browser was always flickering and the hard disk churning, and frames were usually interspersed with blanks as each subsequent frame loaded. Soon after, the animated GIF was born, effectively packing the GIF frame sequence into one file which downloaded once. The animated GIF has been a staple of ad banners and simple attention-grabbing effects ever since. Even sites which promote and showcase Flash and Shockwave interfaces still use animated GIFs because designers know that it's the one animation technology supported in every Web browser that lets you see graphics at all. The limitations of animated GIFs are well-known, but let's summarise them anyway. GIFs are bitmap images, so come at a fixed size regardless of browser window size.

They can reach quite exciting sizes if they include more than 10 frames or so, because compression is based on the number of different colours in each image. They also tend to appear in a jerky fashion during the download, leaving the user staring at a seemingly inexplicable sequence running at one frame every five seconds the first time round. More recently, designers have been able to produce basic path motion for static images using DHTML. Instead of running an animation in one fixed place, DHTML techniques let you take a single image and move it around over the top of your page as an independent, floating object. The nice thing about this approach is that the animation, for what it is, starts almost immediately and the movement is perfectly smooth, not being frame-based. The graphic can also have a transparent background just like any GIF. The big drawback is that it doesn't do anything else terribly interesting. As a result it can come across as just plain annoying or tacky. And it's not really animation.

All in a Flash

While the World Wide Web Consortium squandered most of the 1990s considering some proper animation technologies, Macromedia just went for it. The result was Flash, a system of playing back self-contained movies containing vector-based graphics and text within a Web page or independently running in a Web browser. The advantages of the Flash approach are considerable, and getting more compelling as time goes on. In the first instance, the vector nature of Flash movies allows you to include quite complex graphics and sequences in the confidence that they'll compress down to almost unfeasibly small file sizes.

In practically every test, from simple rollover type and button effects to complete sequences, you'll find that Flash files are smaller than animated GIFs and load up faster than Java actions. Vectors also mean that the movies can resize themselves automatically to fit the browser screen, anti-aliasing on the fly. Better still, Flash movies can incorporate events and react to user input, making it terrific for developing custom Web page interfaces which HTML couldn't hope to imitate. Not least, Flash can include embedded audio. And perhaps best of all from an experienced designer's point of view, the movies can be set to start running as soon as the download commences without waiting for it to complete. There are two principal drawbacks to the Flash format. First, it requires your audience to have a plug-in Flash player installed. However, to Macromedia's credit, the Flash plug-in is a relatively small and speedy download at just a couple of hundred kilobytes.

You should also be aware that Microsoft 3 intends dumping most of the plug-ins it currently ships with Internet Explorer in future - but Flash is the very notable exception. The second drawback might not concern you, but it's that Flash isn't actually a standard in the same way as HTML, GIF, JPG, PNG or something like Java. Flash is a 100 per cent proprietary format owned by Macromedia and licensed out to other graphics software developers on a commercial basis. In practice, of course, it doesn't matter that Flash isn't an officially recognised standard because well over 90 per cent of Internet users already have the plug-in installed: we're talking about hundreds of millions of people, ready to go with your animation content. Fun and sexy though Flash is, it's not a complete multimedia environment.


Originally, Flash arose from a project at Macromedia to make Shockwave animations, already developed for Web playback, even more compact and accessible by people with slow modems. Shockwave is still very much alive and well, and in many cases leaves Flash way behind in terms of visual quality, interactivity and multifunctionality. There's even a lively market for cartoons and games using Shockwave and its offline player ShockMachine. Unlike Flash, however, the Shockwave plug-in is a long download and requires a somewhat fiddly installation process which includes exiting your Web browser at one point. The big limitation of both Flash and Shockwave from a graphic artist's point of view is that the really clever interactive features depend on scripting. Or to choose another word, programming. If you're happy about scripting, indeed if you have some JavaScript experience, you'll find Flash is reasonably approachable; if not, you'll be limited to more conventional animation tasks.

Hot new alternatives

Inevitably, everyone is always on the hunt for a Web animation system that doesn't expect the audience to locate and install third-party plug-ins. These exist, but they do so with solutions that are even more proprietary than Flash, and usually protected by their creators with ridiculously extreme caution. One example of an alternative to Flash that doesn't require a plug-in is CyberSpot. To all intents and purposes, a CyberSpot sequence looks a bit like a basic Flash movie with audio but it loads up in an instant without any preliminaries.

The problem with it is that CyberSpot is marketed as a bespoke service by the company that developed it. You commission them to create a 30-second movie on your behalf, rather than create your own using standard software packages. As you can imagine, this is of limited use except as standalone ads. The hot technology everyone is talking about at the moment that could rival Flash at some point in the future is Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG. It began life as a concept proposed by Adobe to the World Wide Web Consortium and, from the start, Adobe proposed SVG as an open standard in the hope that this will encourage its adoption.

The idea behind SVG is to provide the Web with a vector graphics standard in the same way that GIF, JPG and PNG are bitmap standards. But more than this, it supports animation and user interactivity. And further, it is navigable with pan and zoom functions. This means you could use SVG in a number of different ways to suit the desired result, whether that be a detailed diagram you can zoom into without losing definition (a streetmap is a classic example), Web page interface elements or an interactive animated movie.

SVG supports visual filter effects applied in real time rather than just being frames, and can include audio. One of the reasons so many people are getting interested in SVG is that it is based on XML, which is generally regarded as the next step in Web functionality. XML support in a dynamic vector graphic or animation can link it intelligently to all kinds of data, which in turn could radically alter the way Web content is delivered. As ever, there are drawbacks. One is that SVG, though accepted as an official standard, still requires a plug-in for your browser to display. Although Adobe hopes that one day, SVG support will be built into all browsers, for the immediate future it involves a download of well over 2Mb.

Another limitation is that precious few graphics packages can yet export to SVG other than Adobe Illustrator 9 and Photoshop 6. And this leads to the biggest drawback of all: not many people are using SVG yet and most Web users have never heard of it. All this certainly lends credence to Macromedia's claim that Flash is the real Web animation standard, officially recognised or not. With a widening range of design products now capable of exporting to Flash, including Illustrator and FreeHand, not to mention LiveMotion, Flash is where the action's at for the next couple of years at least, if not indefinitely.

Principles of Animation

28 Principles of Animation

This article was given to me by Mark Kennedy (storyboard artist on Hercules and Tarzan). Thank you Mark for all those handouts!!

Often times animators and storyboarders in the industry are able to get handouts from some of the artists who are great teachers. This is an example of such kind of handout that gets circulated among the artists gradually. It took me quite a while to retype and scan the images from this handout. Please don't reproduce this on the internet without permission. (if you'd like to print it out and give it to another animation student, however, PLEASE do!) The entire article from here on out is by Walt Stanchfield (sp?) I included the images in approximately the same spot as they were on the original hand-written article.

This is a wonderful article for not only beginners but also for practiced animators. Please read it.

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28 Principles of Animation

There are some principles of animation that can be consciously used in any scene. We should familiarize ourselves with them for both animation and animation-cleanup.

To illustrate these principles, I have chosen a supposedly simple scene. When the scene is analyzed, it is apparent how far one may go in using these principles.

The action in this scene is quite broad, making the principles easy to find, but they should be applied to subtle scenes also. Rarely in a picture is a character doing nothing- absolutely nothing. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty spend a short time in complete inactivity, but even then certain of these principles were used.

The use of held drawings and moving holds can be very effective, but only if they contain the vitality of an action drawing. Again, the use of these principles makes that possible.

28 Principles of Animation

The purpose of studying and analyzing a scene like this is to acquaint oneself with the possibilites in the use of the principles of animation. I have listed 28 principles, though there well may be more. At first these will have to be used consciously, then hopefully in time will become second nature. These are the tools of animation and should be incorporated whenever possible. Some of them are accidentally stumbled upon while animating in an emotional spurt, but when the emotions are lax, knowing these principles will enable the artist to animate his scene intellectually, logically and artistically as well as emotionally.

28 Principles of Animation

Here is a list of things (principles) that appear in these drawings, most of which should appear in all scenes, for they comprise the basis for full animation

-Pose and Mood -Shape and Form -Anatomy -Model or Character -Weight -Line and Silhouette -Action and Reaction -Perspective -Direction -Tension

-Planes -Solidity -Arcs -Squash and Stretch -Beat and Rythem -Depth and Volume -Overlap and followthru -Timing -Working from extreme to extreme

-Straights and Curves -Primary and secondary action -Staging and composition -Anticipation -Caricature -Details -Texture -Simplification -Positive and negative shapes

28 Principles of Animation

An example of the observations that might be made by flipping and studying just these two drawings. By shifting your eyes from one drawing to the other you can see these things happening. Watch the negative shapes also.

28 Principles of Animation

... To continue along this line of investigation...

This drawing would be called the "push off". Note that every line and shape on the drawing helps the upward thrust. Even the tail, which is still following the path set up for it by its primary force, the rump, helps by way of contrast and followthrough. Pick any shape on the figure and compare it to drawing #6 on the preceding page. Note how each shape changes to enhance the overall shape and action: the neck, the chest, the legs, the back, etc.

Even though this is just one drawing, there is no doubt about the action that is taking place in this part of the scene. This should be true of any drawing in any scene.

Consider Anatomy Alone:

Aside from its purpose in the scene each drawing can be analyzed for different aspects of drawing. The whole body is a caracature of an animal, but all the parts of a real animal are present i.e., head, neck, back, hips, tail, etc. And each of them work and move in a plausible way.

Anatomy Continued

Anatomy, of course is essential to any drawing whether it has a direct reference to nature or is completely imaginary. Though a character and/or its action may be greatly exaggerated or caracatured, anatomy in a sense remains fairly constant. An elbow is an elbow and only bends in a certain way, and has its limitation. Liberties may be taken but the "reality" of even a cartoon must be kept or it will lose plausibility or credulity. It is not an easy thing to convert one's knowledge of structural anatomy to the cartoon medium.

It has been said that the location of a joint is more important than the joint itself. For instane if an arm shape has been established, it cannot have an elbow bend in an improbable place, no matter how well the elbow is drawn. Compare tiger's arm to that of a real tiger.

Consider Weight

The pull of gravity is one of the most important principles to deal with in animation. Everything has a certain amount of weight and will act and react accordingly. One easy way to lose the attention of an audience is to have feathers falling like bricks or bricks falling like feathers.

A certain humor can be gotten by bending the rules but should only be used where humor or special effect is called for. In shorts cartoons defying the laws of gravity, weight, speed, squash and stretch, etc., is a the rule of thumb. In Disney feature cartoons such flamboyant abandonment must be handled more discriminately.

Wanna be a 3D Animator?

Good 3D animators are the most highly sought-after artist in the world of 3D. There's a reason for this: good animation is hard. Which is not to say that animation is hard to learn, but rather that making animation that is believable and entertaining requires a lot of skill and practice. Most people who become 3D artists rarely venture beyond modeling, and their forays into animation are inexpert at best, and cringe-worthy or unwatchable at worst.

This is because animation requires a completely different skillset than 3D modeling. In fact, these two aspects of 3D art are so different that 3D modelers are rarely animators, and animators can rarely model. Established studios usually hire dedicated animators to do the bulk of the animation. Modelers, if they have any input into the animation process at all, usually stick with rigging.

What you should take away is not that it's impossible to be a good modeler and animator, but that these two subsets of 3D art require different ways of thinking and usually do not share techniques.

The Basics of 3D Animation
Animation in 3D applications usually happens in two primary ways. In major productions, both may be used.

1. Keyframe animation - Keyframe animation, or keyframing, is the most well-known and oldest style of animation. In fact, there are examples of frame-by-frame animation dating all the way back to 1600 B.C. Egypt! Modern keyframing techniques date back to the early cartoons created by animation pioneers like Winsor McCay and Walt Disney. What may surprise you is that keyframing techniques have not changed much since the early 1900's - most of the basic principles still apply today. What has changed is that 3D software packages have made keyframing much easier to accomplish, meaning a broader scope of artists can learn how to animate.

Keyframing is essentially changing the shape, position, spacing, or timing of an object in successive frames, with major changes to the object being the key frames. In traditional 2D animation, each frame is usually drawn by hand. When frames are shown in succession, as in a movie, the slight differences in each frame of animation create the illusion of motion. 3D software packages make keyframe animation easier by interpolating, or "tweening," the in-between frames. When animating a falling ball, for example, one key frame might be of the ball in mid-air, the next key frame may be the ball touching the ground, and the key frame after that would be the ball squishing down as the impact deforms its shape. All of the in-between frames are then calculated by the software automatically, including the squish at the bottom, making actual process of animation a matter of creating a few great key frames.

2. Motion capture - Motion capture, or mocap, was first used sparingly due to the limitations of the technology, but is seeing increased acceptance in everything from video game animation to CG effects in movies as the technique matures. Whereas keyframing is a precise, but slow animation method, motion capture offers an immediacy not found in traditional animation techniques. Mocap subjects, usually actors, are placed in a special suit containing sensors that record the motion of their limbs as they move. The data is then linked to the rig of a 3D character and translated into animation by the 3D software.

There are a couple downsides to motion capture which make it difficult for beginning 3D animators to learn. Firstly is the cost of mocap technology, which can run several thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. This means that most new 3D artists must learn to incorporate this animation style by importing mocap data into a project from a commercially available mocap library.

The other downside to mocap is that the end-result is often far from perfect; mocap animation usually requires clean-up from keyframe artists to make it look more realistic, especially if the character being animated does not have an anatomy or proportions similar to those of a human.

Learning 3D Animation
Animators must have a keen understanding of motion, movement, and acting. It may surprise you that the best animators take acting lessons - this helps them understand how their own body moves, and makes it easier to transfer that understanding into believable animation.

Keen observation may be the most important skill to develop as an animator. Observe life around you, and how things move. Make sketches, take notes, and try to give meaning to what you observe. Don't study just animation. Learn from film, theatre, and even comic books to understand how poses and movement create moods and nonverbally communicate messages. New animators would do well to learn from the old masters of 20th century animation - Walt Disney, Art Babbitt, Grim Natwick, and Ken Anderson. The principles used to bring characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny to life are still as relevant today as they were back then. Indeed, the first place a new 3D animator should look is to the old animation manuals of 2D artists. Consider picking up "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams from your local book dealer. While written as a book about hand-drawn animation, it contains everything you'll need to know about good animation techniques in the 3D world.

The beginning 3D animator will want to focus on basic objects first: how to make a ball move from one place to another, and how to make it bounce. Later, as you explore character animation, you'll need to understand what makes a good walk cycle, and how to cut down on "float," a common problem for new animators where the character moves as if underwater. The software used is not important, at least in the beginning, as animation packages all have the same basic features.

3D animators must also have a good grasp of how models are rigged for animation, especially character animators. The "bones" used in a rig must be placed in a way similar to that of a living creature. Animators must also learn how to use inverse kinematic (IK) setups for their character rigs to reduce the amount of time spent keyframing.

Above all else, animators must practice their craft. Like modeling, animation requires time to learn, and even more time to master. Even experienced animators may create dozens, or even hundreds of test movies before getting a good final result. A good animator can make an average model come to life, while even the best model can be made to look amateurish by a poor animator. Persistence will pay off, as a skilled animator can very well be the most important team member to a production.

Animation Techniques

There are four basic techniques to be used in animation.

These are:

• Drawn animation

• Cut-out animation]

• Model animation or stop motion animation

• Computer animation or computer generated imagery (CGI)

(1) Drawn animation-- Drawn animation, also termed as traditional animation and classical animation, is the oldest and historically the most prevalent form of animation. In a traditionally-animated cartoon, each frame is drawn by hand.This encloses any form, where one drawing is put back by another in a progression. Each drawing is somewhat unusual from the one which is placed before.

Animated films are made up of thousands of drawings, depicted on screen very rapidly one after the other. It works in the same manner as the flip book does.

(2) Cut-out animation-- The world's earliest known animated feature film was cutout animations, made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani. By using flat characters, such as—strings, stiff fabric, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper; and by using buttons, matchsticks or even photographs, you can create cut-out animation. It embraces any figure of animation where cut-out forms be in motion or substitute by the other cut-outs.

(3) Model animation or stop motion animation-- Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence.

By using materials, such as—clay, wire that can be bent or formed into another shape, you can create model animation. This engrosses the filming of puppets or any other form of three-dimensional models. Before moving slightly and screening, it is placed, filmed and than these shots are placed jointly as a section of the film and will give the hallucination of moving models.

(4) Computer animation or Computer Generated Imagery (CGI)-- Computer animation is the skill of building the moving images by means of computers. This refers to the portrayal of three-dimensional models and locations on the computer. Images can be scanned into the computer via digital photography or made within the computer itself.

To produce the delusion of movement, an image is presented on the computer screen which is swiftly put back by the new image that is alike to the preceding image, but shifted to some extent. Computer animation is basically a digital successor to the art of stop motion animation of 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations.

In a method known as—Tweening or Morphing, the variations in appearance between the key frames are automatically considered by the computer and finally Animation is rendered at the end.

Which 3D Animation Software Should I Use?

3D software tends to range in complexity and sophistication, although these days even the simplest 3D software is capable of impressive results. However, choosing the right 3D program is not a trivial matter, nor is it an easy one. There are many factors to take into account, and your choice will also depend on your intentions. Do you just want to dabble or include a little 3D rendering in your website? Perhaps you are a 2D designer and want to start incorporating 3D in your illustration work. Maybe you have learned about 3D using free software and intend to pursue 3D as a career. Here we will go over the options available in three general sectors of the market: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Most 3D programs are available as demo versions, so you can try them out and get a feel of how they work before committing any of your hard-earned cash.

Basic

At the bottom end of the market there are plenty of low cost, easy to use 3D programs. Because of the low cost and small market share, this is a volatile sector, with 3D applications popping into and out of the market quite rapidly. Some of these applications last a little longer than normal, while others vanish without a trace, so don't be surprised if any mentioned here are no longer available by the time you read this! Whatever the name, they all tend to follow the same basic path-making 3D as easy as possible, but without the power and finesse of the more expensive packages.

If you want something for nothing, there are a few freeware versions of 3D packages available. 3D Canvas from amabilis.com is a cut down version of the company's commercial 3D packages. It's a fully functional 3D application but is probably more suited to the intermediate 3D users or keen beginners.

Xara 3D is a typical low end 3D package, still going strong after multiple versions. Costing about $39, it's a PC-only 3D program that won't break the bank but is pretty limited as 3D programs go. Xara is great for quick logos and fun titles, but really that is about it.

Adobe Dimension is a plug-in for illustrator (Mac or PC) that generates rendered 3D objects from illustrator curves and text. Again, it's limited but very simple to use, and for some it's all that is needed.

Although more suited to intermediate users, Amorphium from ElectricImage Inc. is an esy to use 3D program designed to work in a very hands on way. If you want to sculpt 3D objects as if they were lumps of clay then render them very simply, it's a good way to go.

Poser is included here because it is so easy to use, but in fact it's usefulness extends right up to the pro level. It's a 3D character renderer and animator that lets you pose and animate ready-made, high quality 3D figures. It's very powerful, but it's not an all rounder- it does one thing only-but does it very well.

Intermediate

The quality of intermediate 3D software can vary, but there are a few things to bear in mind. Make sure the rendering is up to speed, and examine online galleries of the software, which you can usually find on the developer's site. This will usually give you a good idea of the quality on offer. Most of the programs are available as demo versions, so they can be downloaded for evaluation.

Strata's Strata 3D has a long history and is available for Mac and PC. It's a sturdy if slightly archaic 3D program, but it has found favor with many digital illustrators. It has some good rendering features, including radiosity, which are rare at the price. www.strata3d.com

Pixels is a Mac-only 3D program that offers advanced rendering and animation and robust modeling for a modest cost. It also features a renderer based on the REYES algorithm-the same one used in Pixar's RenderMan software.

Corel's Bryce 3D is an interesting 3D program. It's primarily a landscape rendering application, designed to produce skies, seas, and terrains in a very efficient way. It can be pressed into service as a more general purpose 3D tool, but lacks any serious modeling tools. www.corel.com

One of the best free 3D applications available is Blender. This program is a full featured 3D production package featuring the kinds of tools you'd expect to see in a mid to high end application.

Advanced

At the high end level of 3D applications, it's not so much the tools as their implementation that makes the difference, and each 3D application listed here has its own style of working. Some of these applications are costly, seriously powerful, and used for many high-end effects in movies and television.

Newtek's Lightwave 3D is a dual application featuring separate modeler/texturing and animation/lighting/rendering apps. Its quirky interface is deceptively powerful, and it offers one of the best quality renderers out there.

Softimage XSI combines sublime modeling with non-linear animation, scripting, and phenomenal rendering through tight integration with Mental Images' Mental Ray rendering software. It also features an integrated 2D/3D compositor.

Alias's Maya 3D is extremely powerful. Its node-based architecture enables complex animation and rendering linkages to be created and it offers a nonlinear modeling history, plus Mental Ray rendering.

Discreet's 3Ds Max has always been a popular choice. Its design is not as modern as Maya or Softimage but it holds its own, especially in the games production market, and comes with Mental Ray rendering as standard.

Houdini is a fully procedural animation system that takes the node-based architecture to the nth degree. Sublimely powerful, it's not for the faint hearted, but offers the kind of flexibility other applications only hint at.

The full suite of plug-ins for Cinema 4D takes it into the high end. With advanced radiosity rendering, sophisticated character tools, and a GUI based expression system, it's also one of the easiest high-end 3D apps to get to grips with.

Now, go forth and create!

How To Create A Powerful Multimedia Blog

Why Multimedia Content Is Good For You

Have you toyed with the idea of a building a multimedia blog? Well not to be rude, but it's about time! Admit it - a text-based blog is boring. No matter how information-rich your posts are, they're just text and the last time we paid attention to any of it, text didn't exactly throw us into any sort of exciting frenzy!

With today's technology, there's really no reason why you can't turn your blog into a virtual entertainment center complete with video, audio, instant messaging, and more. This article describes a couple of the multimedia tools we're talking about just so you can get an idea of how you can turn a Plain Jane Blog into a screaming wild ride of thrilling exhilaration.

Internet Video

Online video takes multimedia to the max and quite often, making it available from your blog can be a simple matter of installing a plugin or pasting in a small piece of javascript code. YouTube offers thousands of free videos like this for example, but if you want to make your presentation truly unique, you'll need to make your own little movies. Most of today's cameras (and some cell phones) can turn anyone into an instant movie maker and if you're not camera shy, you can record yourself using a product that you're selling, you can record yourself explaining a particular technique, or you can simply record yourself giving a speech.

If you are camera-shy however, you can record your computer screen instead. Thanks to a sweet and free screen-capturing program called Camtasia, you can make videos of yourself using software like Microsoft Excel or Word with or without audio and text bubbles. If you're a software developer, you can make training videos and teach your users how to use your programs while you're sleeping!

Internet Audio

Offering audio on your blog is another great way to satisfy today's multimedia-crazed society -- especially since we're all naturally attracted to sound more than we're attracted to text. With audio, you're presented with a couple of options. You can offer streaming audio, which is live audio broadcast from a radio station or even from your own home. Or you can offer recorded files. Many blogs will play a recorded audio file as soon it's loaded while others let visitors download a collection of files.

Either way, audio gives you the opportunity to offer an earful of business-related speeches, lectures, or interviews and increase the interactivity of your blog at the same time.

Instant Delivery v/s Archived Delivery

If the truth must be known, immediacy is what makes multimedia most effective. Streaming video and audio is much more exciting than their recorded forms because they're LIVE. It gives visitors the feeling that they're "right there" inside the action and that they're part of an important event.

If offering your own streaming information isn't a feasible option for you right now, offer some of the free streaming videos and audios that are already available. You'll find a ton of relevant subjects ranging from software and computer topics to sewing and fishing hobbies. Just be sure that you keep your visitors' capabilities in mind when offering these tools.

You don't want for example, to overburden your visitors' computers by forcing unwanted downloads. Always give your visitors the choice of listening to an audio file or watching a video. Believe it or not, a significant portion of the Internet community still connects via dial up. These users for instance, won't appreciate having to download a ten megabyte audio file before your blog completely loads -- especially since it can take dial up users up to half an hour before that download is even finished!

In the increasingly competitive online environment, of high quality websites, intuitive shopping carts, interactive image or product galleries and valuable content delivery tools it is becoming ever more of a struggle for the small to medium size business to compete, but, that’s certainly not to say it’s impossible.

Whilst competition is, in many instances, a good thing, in terms of pushing up the quality, reducing the cost to the end user, creating greater choice in the marketplace and harbouring innovation it presents the problem of engagement, particularly in the online sphere.

The rich media and applications of sites like the BBC, YouTube, Trip Advisor, the quality editorial of shopping portals including Amazon and the major social networking sites of Facebook and Bebo fight for attention against conventional platforms, and whilst this statement doesn’t consider the innumerable users and their diverse online needs it goes in some way to illustrate the state of the playing field, and how the bar really has been raised.

But what is your strategy? How can you engage customers? How do you compete for their attention? And once you’ve got customers, how do you retain them? In addition, how can you make cost savings in your marketing by turning visitors into loyal repeat customers who might in turn spread the word about your products and services?

One such engagement tool is multimedia content, which encompasses audio and video content. These multimedia mediums, allow business and website owners to engage with users and communicate differently to the traditional static pages of text and images users might expect from much of the web.

An excellent example of this is UK stag and hen organizers Adventure Connections (http://www.adventureconnections.co.uk) who have devoted their homepage to a range of branded videos which describe their services, ‘sell’ their products and encourage readership in a way that pages of content just couldn’t.

Justin Sayers from Adventure Connections has reported:

“We’ve seen an instant increase in inquiries and customers seem to have more confidence in our brand, which, for a web based company, is excellent!”

In light of the competitive nature of the stag and hen industry, Adventure Connections sought to differentiate themselves from the websites of their competitors by adding value to how they communicated and the choice and format of video played a crucial role in how the company sought to drive forward this strategy.

Opting for professionally recorded video content which employed the services of two trained actors and a blue screen with which to superimpose further video content of the activities, Adventure Connections were rewarded with a range of high quality branded videos, which undoubtedly contribute to the professionalism of the website, the perception of the Adventure Connections brand, and, as Justin Sayers has reported, an increase in conversions.

This user centric approach serves the needs of the ever savvy user, who craves information and will just as quickly move off your website if they cannot find the information they need, and multimedia content is another tool to effectively communicate.

Multimedia content needn’t stop at video either as the use of podcasting technology represents a further opportunity to demonstrate authority in your sector by communicate news, interviews and other discussions in the form of a downloadable podcast, over, or in additional to, traditional static pages.

Therefore the opportunity to increase your conversions is presented when harnessing multimedia content, which can

- Heighten the perception of your brand
- Cement your position as an authority within your field
- Enhance the user experience
- Naturally attracts links to your website
- Differentiate from your competitions and
- Encourage customers to visit the other pages of your website or ‘find out more’

In this age of competitively, engagement is a key consideration, and this is just one reason why multimedia content is good for you.

Multimedia People

Once upon a time, there were no mobile phones and when there were mobile phones, they were expensive. Yet in such a short space of time (just six or seven years) they have become so mainstream that you can buy the models in supermarkets and call credit and accessories just about everywhere else. In fact, mobile phones have evolved beyond themselves … and are now mobile multi-media centres with electronic organisers, cameras, MP3 players and media recorders.

No longer can you buy “just a phone”. Indeed research suggests that consumers’ expectations have increased to the extent where making calls is no longer enough – we want the works - video messaging, cameras, walkmans - you name it! Video calls used to be confined to sci-fi films and cartoons, now we’re sending naughty pictures – as if mobile networks were the most private and intimate places in the world. Even children are prepared to spend their allowances on the latest mobile phone gadgets; look at the storm of interest over “crazy frog”. Consequently, mobile phone providers are beginning to narrow their promotional campaigns and strategy into increasingly niche markets

Dominant players in the mobile phone market, such as Sony Ericsson, http://www.sonyericsson.com, are beginning to specialise by apparently developing mobile phones into the audio and visual entertainment centres, with models featuring music players and cameras. With the recent launch of the W800i walkman phone, a new musical revolution is coming into full swing, as mobile compact disc players seem increasingly archaic.

Conversely, some mobile phone companies are targeting parents who want to keep a close eye on their children. Parental controls are now offered through a wireless service whereby parents can keep track on where their children are situated through a mobile mapping system. Some phones even allow parents to determine who the contacts their children can call and how long they spend on the phone. RuleSpace, http://www.rulespace.com is one of the many companies that offer this service. Many argue that all mobile phones should be equipped with such a device for security reasons.

The Blackberry (the latest technology to be courted by professionals) is mobile e-mail and mobile phone, http://www.blackberry.com. Discovered years ago by “techies”, the Blackberry word-of-mouth has now reached a broader audience and has been picked up extensively in the media. Thanks to the speedy global growth of the Blackberry application, insiders say the mobile phone market is prepared for further innovation in mobile phone services.

The innovations exploited by mobile phone companies to date have desensitised us to technological innovation, but whilst we may not be surprised by technology anymore, we’re still prepared to pay for endless plug and play.