The Roots of China's Animation Boom

A trip into the Flash era.

A still from The Legend of Luo Xiaohei (2011–2021)

Welcome! Thanks for joining us today. It’s another Thursday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter — and this one is about Flash.

Adobe shocked people this week. For several years, the company’s followed the GenAI road to nowhere. That journey continued, on Monday, with the announcement of a plan to shutter Adobe Animate. Quickly, pushback from Animate’s large and dedicated userbase ended that plan.

The reversal was a piece of good news, at a time when we need good news. Artists won this one — the software will survive a while longer. And the remnants of the Flash era aren’t gone just yet.

Technically, Flash got wiped out years ago. Nobody uses .SWF or .FLV files anymore, and it’s been a decade since the Flash software morphed into Animate. The two programs share a continuity, though. Users of Animate do a lot of creative stuff, from indies (Take Off the Blindfold) to current Oscar nominees (Little Amélie) — and they’re working with the same tools that, in the ‘90s and ‘00s, remade the whole animation world.¹

We’ve written before about what Flash unleashed. Suddenly, animators anywhere could reach viewers everywhere, online, with file sizes small enough for dial-up. Before he won his Oscar, Kunio Kato rose through his Flash series Tortov Roddle. Russia’s Flash scene created, for one, the brilliant Sasha Svirsky.

Then there was China, the country maybe most affected by Flash. Xiao Xiao (2000–2002) doesn’t need an introduction — and it was only one product of a wide, wide community.

Flash animation like Cat from 2002 was headline news in China. The creators of this stuff were a big deal, and they came from all walks. Through Flash, anybody could express themselves to the public, share their ideas and maybe build an art career. Animation was now open to all.

China’s animation field has grown a lot over the past 10 or 12 years — and that growth began in the Flash era. You can trace it root by root.