Adobe Animate Pros and Cons

Even after 20+ years on the market, including marketing changes such as the change in ownership from Macromedia to Adobe, or the name change from Flash to Animate, the program has held onto its core strengths. Features that are easy to take for granted, like Movie clips, the multi-layer timeline, onion skinning, and variable brush stroke lengths still behave much the way they have ever since they were introduced. This makes it very easy for me to be able to jump back in after any lengthy times away from the program. On top of its strengths for animation, I genuinely find it better than Illustrator for vector graphics (at least for illustration purposes, such as characters or backgrounds). Where Illustrator has accumulated decades of mind-boggingly unintuitive behaviors, requiring lengthy workarounds for even basic functionality, Animate's vector illustration is simple, straightforward, and far less prone to "why was the program designed that way?" moments. Illustrator may be more powerful for the nitty-gritty of vector illustration, but by and large, drawing a character in Animate will be much less of a hassle than drawing the same one in Illustrator. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Much like in the later stages of Flash's life, starting with CS5.5, it's frustrating when Adobe chooses to gut functionality in a new version. For example, old files written in Actionscript can still be edited to a degree, but Flash functionality is entirely gone, meaning even the simplest interactions need to be rebuilt with other tools, such as HTML5. I understand that this is because Flash Player itself was removed (largely due to A) security concerns, and B) the web's growing interest in replacing Flash with tools like HTML5), but it would've been nice to still see offline functionality for these old files, instead of needing to jump through hoops to dig up an old version of the Creative Suite. Additionally, animators used to animation programs with a lot of flexibility for textures in pencil strokes (i.e. Toon Boom) might be frustrated to see Animate's only compatible with vector-based brushes. There's potential for using rasters for backgrounds, but otherwise, one would have trouble forcing Animate to adapt to raster-based brushes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's easy to use, even beginners can use it almost right away with minimal knowledge of how a timeline work and some tools. As a former university professor, I could teach my students to animate basic characters in less than half an hour. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some important panels and tabs are almost hidden from the sight, for example, the properties panel has four tabs that could be scrollers or accordeons instead of tabs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is an application with many more programs for the creative level, the basic to advanced arts, design, design graphics, photos, videos, web, logos, painting, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only thing I see negatively is that sometimes the programs are costly separately, and sometimes the parts of free samples are not complete to make the client fall in love with them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Animate is most significant for me in my character animation workflow. The rigging system is the most useful feature for me. That combined with the added benefit of receiving the entire suite of Adobe products with a low monthly fee. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Coming from mostly using Adobe After Effects there is somewhat of a learning curve for me to adapt to the new workflow. If time is an issue on a project, I sometimes revert back to AE for vector animations in order to complete on time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

super easy, super fast and it gave the creative agencies the opportunity to produce in-house animations that looks amazing Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The rigging is still a bit complicated, and sometimes there are bugs that is hard to fix Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Whenever we put the name Adobe Flash in the conversation. People used to revert with phrases like 'Flash is outdated/ or even dead'. No matter how the industry or people criticize it, Adobe Flash can never be dead. With its super cool functionalities, no one can ever deny the fact that it's the best animation tool that existed and got rebranded and now it is popularly known as Adobe Animate.

To me, it's the best beginner-friendly and easy-to-use application, which offers to animate frame by frame in an efficient way.

The best thing I like is the use of Action Scripts for interactivity. Through this, we can be able to achieve lots of gaming methods. Also, we can create content for HTML publishing, WebGL etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the tweening features inbuilt saving us lots of time animating.

But one thing I dislike though is that now we cannot work on mp4 contents. We can use mp4 videos in the timeline for adding animations as a guide or reference layer but we cannot work on them.

Certain features like the .wav format didn't support initially. Now they say it supports but need to check them. But for any feature that is missing one can get make to their Adobe Flash Professional CS6 version to make things happen. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very easy to use, and tonnes of walkthroughs out there to make it significantly easy to learn and use Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very little to dislike, a few saving issues but those were rectified with an update in 2021. This tool has no downsides for our purposes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

vectorization of lines is handy when "zooming in" on certain shots without pixelating the image, but often gives animation a very flat lack-luster look. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

limited options for linework, colouring pipeline is non-existent and overly complex, freezes and crashes with too much regularity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Animation is done in a quick and intuitive way. It accepts vectors created in Illustrator, which makes the work easier. Additionally, it allows you to export them in various formats that you can then share in editing programs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Adobe Animate is the old Flash, but it lost some things and gained others. What I don't like is that it can no longer be used on the internet, and for making games, it was easy, and the scripts are now more complicated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Animate gives us all the tools needed to make simple and complex animations. We can make an animated movie, add music and sound, and export videos and web art all from Animate. Animate also works well with images made in Illustrator and Photoshop, so if you feel comfortable drawing outside of Animate, you can and simply import your art. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because Animate is such a robust software with many tools, there is a steep learning curve. If you want to add coding to your animation for stuff like randomness or changing coordinates of objects automaticially, you have to somewhat know Actionscript programming. I have always struggled with Actionscript, so some things might take longer to figure out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.