I was working as a web designer and splash page illustrator/animator with Macromedia Flash and Director in 2000. It was such a fantastic time to be working in that space – so much creativity and excitement around a new medium. It was short-lived, sadly. Thank you for writing this fascinating profile about an artist who took the Internet by storm at the time. I never even knew his name until now.
So cool to hear about this! We saw the Flash-powered sites of that time, but never really knew about the designers or culture behind the work. And really appreciate the kind words about the piece -- glad we could cover Zhu. He often isn't given a place in the animation history books, but his influence was off the charts, and we wanted to set his story down.
Ahh, I didn't know the Nike ruling had been overturned, rip...
I was definitely one of many influenced by the flash scene. Lacking a copy of Flash, I spent most school lunchtimes animating my stick figures "frame by frame" in Powerpoint. Now I'm used to using decent animation tools, it's baffling to me that I could get anywhere with those limits, but it was comprehensible to me at the time.
While the old Flash scene may be dead, I hold on to some hope that a more resilient indie animation scene seems to be crystalising around more resilient tools like Blender and CSP. The technical demands to stand out are much higher these days, though!
It's a shame what happened with the Nike thing. Zhu was unlucky -- in a lot of ways. One can only wonder how things might have turned out if he'd blown up a decade or two later. But then he wouldn't have been a foundational influence on the Flash scene, so it's definitely a tradeoff.
Love that PowerPoint story! Honestly, even Flash was pretty limited in those years, although it didn't really seem to register in the Flash scene. The freedom to make your own animation and games was intoxicating. It's interesting to look back now, because way more and better tools exist, and YouTube's reach is a billion times greater than Newgrounds' was. But you don't necessarily see the same frenzied excitement about making slapdash stuff and putting it out. Maybe it's the huge rise in standards (like you mentioned).
It's still heartening to see a bunch of younger artists making Blender films, though. There's still passion out there, and Blender is way superior to anything Flash ever was, on top of being free. If only they had a more centralized community hub like Flash Empire -- hopefully something emerges!
Not making any great claims but I discovered Shockwave Flash in the late 90’s and could see its potential.
The best I managed to do was an animated interactive Christmas card for Passion Pictures in London in around ‘99/00, designed by an illustrator and which I built along with all the interactive elements and sound effects that came with the standalone version.
I still have it somewhere - it was a mad rush to get it finished, I even missed out on Passion’s Xmas studio outing to complete it before it was mailed out as an email attachment to all their ad agency clients.
Yes, all those issues around bandwidth and file size that had to be considered before mailing out, and it had to be embedded into a custom temp’ webpage to be viewed.
I am also an early Flash enthusiast and developer, and I am very familiar with the works mentioned in the article. I am a heavy user of software from Macromedia such as Flash, Director, Authorware, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks, and I was also a frequent visitor to websites mentioned in the article like Flash Empire.
This little animation influenced an entire generation—and it also impacted me twenty years ago.
I'm writing a Chinese-language blog and would like to republish this article. I hope to help more Chinese readers learn about this piece of history. May I have your permission to republish it?
Now I mostly publish content on WeChat Official Accounts, which has a better dissemination effect.
My WeChat Official Account names are 「曾嵘胡扯的地方」 and 「胡扯游戏」, if you have a WeChat account, you can follow my Official Accounts to learn about my writing.
I used to watch so many Flash animations on Newgrounds in the heyday of the early 2000's, this was one of them. They may not have said much in terms of story, but they were always pushing what was possible.
Another Flash animation I loved watching was called Bitey of Brackenwood. It was all animated in Flash, but was styled as close as possible to a traditional cel animated feature. It looked absolutely incredible, and the characters moved just like you would have expected from Disney.
Really cool to hear this! Bitey is one we didn't learn about ourselves until the last few years, but it was interesting to discover -- it was very ambitious for that era. You can see how the YouTube indie scene eventually grew out of projects like that one.
I was born in ‘99, so I was WAY too young to remember the craze with Flash and stick figures back in the day, let alone aware of it. But it sounded like such an amazing time, I wish I was a part of it when it was happening!
Haha, it was definitely wild! There were pros and cons to that era, but it's fun to look back from today and see it all in context, and the impact it ultimately had. Things are way better for animators online today, in a lot of ways, but the Flash scene had a few key aspects that we haven't quite figured out how to recapture yet.
Your article is on the front page of Hacker News; congrats on once again making the big leagues. ;)
I had seen the films but never knew the name or story of the artist until now, so thank you. Xiao Xiao, say what you will, was very well done. Though its virality was also a product of its era.
There was a period of almost a decade during which hosting live action video was an order of magnitude more expensive than hosting vector animation due to the enormous file size differences, and it loaded far quicker for people too. So today's influencer landscape was simply impossible, and viral films tended to be animated. When Flash was abandoned by Adobe, and Newgrounds failed to solve the monetization problem well enough (aside from the few creators that they directly sponsored), artists moved to YouTube en masse, where there was no longer any file size advantage for animation. Adobe Animate may be Flash's direct descendant, but there is no longer a way to share an awesome animated film online that weighs under a megabyte and looks sharper than a 1080p YouTube video. I guess there's (in theory) HTML5, but the apps are nowhere near as user friendly for artists, and the ecosystem does not exist. Newgrounds signed its death warrant by agreeing to play on YouTube's (much more expensive) turf by supporting regular videos. It was never going to be cost-effective. Even during its heyday, it barely was.
If one did a survey of various popular or acclaimed artists of that era, I wonder what percent of them were able to keep working on basically the same sort of thing they were doing then, and what trade-offs they had to make. So many of them crashed out for one reason or another (or sabotaged themselves... Looking at you, chluiad and Ola Bergner...). At least some managed to transition to the Patreon model (e.g. SexualLobster).
Thanks so much! We were amazed by the response on Hacker News -- this one very much seems to have struck a chord with folks.
Really appreciate the thoughts on Flash as well: great points about the reasons for its success back in the day. It was basically perfect for that moment in time. Something we find fascinating is the group of people who jumped from the Flash scene to other parts of the animation world, like Sasha Svirsky or (in China) Busifan. Huge talents grew out of it, even if some of them left behind their roots to do it.
This is a great article. I remember those days fondly! My friends & I were in high school & discovered Xiao Xiao & similar shorts & were greatly inspired! We found a website that was like a "digital flipbook" that let us make our own, much more limited, stick figure toons. They were pixelated knock offs done in the computer lab at school after we finished our class work or at home while we messaged over AOL AIM. They didn't compare to the originals, but the spark had been lit! I had a blast. The full website went away & all the cartoon shorts were lost. But our excitement watching Xiao Xiao is something I remember well! Thanks for sharing this story behind the scenes.
Thanks so much -- happy you enjoyed the piece! Really appreciate these stories from the old days as well. It's been great to hear from folks who caught the Xiao Xiao bug at the time and got inspired. The series was some kind of perfect fit for that moment.
Unfortunately, that streamer locks itself to animation students, pros and press -- we wish it was more widely accessible! With luck, The Night Boots will be publicly available soon, now that we're entering Oscar season.
For sure -- a ton of big series were directly inspired by this one. Animator vs. Animation is one we saw mentioned a lot in the discussion around this article, and it was very much a product of that time.
It’s so frustrating to think about such a talented artist having his career essentially stolen from him by a giant corporation. Over what I’m sure is an amount of money that would barely make a dent in their bottom line. He should be choreographing scenes in movies!!!
It's a really shameful incident that should be more widely known. If Nike and their ad agency loved the Xiao Xiao concept, they should've paid Zhu to be involved in the campaign himself. It's only right. But, if nothing else, hopefully he understands the impact he had. His work was genuinely game-changing, and he inspired more people than most artists could dream of inspiring. We also hope he's doing all right for himself these days -- the most recent update we've read said he was still working in games, but we don't know what he's doing now.
I was working as a web designer and splash page illustrator/animator with Macromedia Flash and Director in 2000. It was such a fantastic time to be working in that space – so much creativity and excitement around a new medium. It was short-lived, sadly. Thank you for writing this fascinating profile about an artist who took the Internet by storm at the time. I never even knew his name until now.
So cool to hear about this! We saw the Flash-powered sites of that time, but never really knew about the designers or culture behind the work. And really appreciate the kind words about the piece -- glad we could cover Zhu. He often isn't given a place in the animation history books, but his influence was off the charts, and we wanted to set his story down.
Ahh, I didn't know the Nike ruling had been overturned, rip...
I was definitely one of many influenced by the flash scene. Lacking a copy of Flash, I spent most school lunchtimes animating my stick figures "frame by frame" in Powerpoint. Now I'm used to using decent animation tools, it's baffling to me that I could get anywhere with those limits, but it was comprehensible to me at the time.
While the old Flash scene may be dead, I hold on to some hope that a more resilient indie animation scene seems to be crystalising around more resilient tools like Blender and CSP. The technical demands to stand out are much higher these days, though!
It's a shame what happened with the Nike thing. Zhu was unlucky -- in a lot of ways. One can only wonder how things might have turned out if he'd blown up a decade or two later. But then he wouldn't have been a foundational influence on the Flash scene, so it's definitely a tradeoff.
Love that PowerPoint story! Honestly, even Flash was pretty limited in those years, although it didn't really seem to register in the Flash scene. The freedom to make your own animation and games was intoxicating. It's interesting to look back now, because way more and better tools exist, and YouTube's reach is a billion times greater than Newgrounds' was. But you don't necessarily see the same frenzied excitement about making slapdash stuff and putting it out. Maybe it's the huge rise in standards (like you mentioned).
It's still heartening to see a bunch of younger artists making Blender films, though. There's still passion out there, and Blender is way superior to anything Flash ever was, on top of being free. If only they had a more centralized community hub like Flash Empire -- hopefully something emerges!
Wow, these animations helped inspire me to choose animation as a career.
Ah, that's awesome! It's incredible how many folks Xiao Xiao reached and influenced.
Great article! I still use Animate, the successor to Flash.
Thank you! And there's brilliant stuff being done in Animate -- it's cool that the program has maintained in some form.
Not making any great claims but I discovered Shockwave Flash in the late 90’s and could see its potential.
The best I managed to do was an animated interactive Christmas card for Passion Pictures in London in around ‘99/00, designed by an illustrator and which I built along with all the interactive elements and sound effects that came with the standalone version.
I still have it somewhere - it was a mad rush to get it finished, I even missed out on Passion’s Xmas studio outing to complete it before it was mailed out as an email attachment to all their ad agency clients.
I’ve no idea to this day if it went down well..:)
Thanks so much for sharing this story! Animated cards were a huge deal back then, and it's awesome to have a window into that time.
Yes, all those issues around bandwidth and file size that had to be considered before mailing out, and it had to be embedded into a custom temp’ webpage to be viewed.
I am also an early Flash enthusiast and developer, and I am very familiar with the works mentioned in the article. I am a heavy user of software from Macromedia such as Flash, Director, Authorware, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks, and I was also a frequent visitor to websites mentioned in the article like Flash Empire.
This little animation influenced an entire generation—and it also impacted me twenty years ago.
I'm writing a Chinese-language blog and would like to republish this article. I hope to help more Chinese readers learn about this piece of history. May I have your permission to republish it?
This sounds very interesting! We're open to the idea, but would it be possible to look at your blog first?
https://blog.zengrong.net/post/goodbye-flash/
Above is an article from my blog mourning Flash.
Now I mostly publish content on WeChat Official Accounts, which has a better dissemination effect.
My WeChat Official Account names are 「曾嵘胡扯的地方」 and 「胡扯游戏」, if you have a WeChat account, you can follow my Official Accounts to learn about my writing.
Thank you! We'd be happy to let you republish the article, with credit to us as the original authors. Hope your readers enjoy it!
Thank you very much!
After the article is published, I will notify you
I used to watch so many Flash animations on Newgrounds in the heyday of the early 2000's, this was one of them. They may not have said much in terms of story, but they were always pushing what was possible.
Another Flash animation I loved watching was called Bitey of Brackenwood. It was all animated in Flash, but was styled as close as possible to a traditional cel animated feature. It looked absolutely incredible, and the characters moved just like you would have expected from Disney.
Really cool to hear this! Bitey is one we didn't learn about ourselves until the last few years, but it was interesting to discover -- it was very ambitious for that era. You can see how the YouTube indie scene eventually grew out of projects like that one.
I was born in ‘99, so I was WAY too young to remember the craze with Flash and stick figures back in the day, let alone aware of it. But it sounded like such an amazing time, I wish I was a part of it when it was happening!
Haha, it was definitely wild! There were pros and cons to that era, but it's fun to look back from today and see it all in context, and the impact it ultimately had. Things are way better for animators online today, in a lot of ways, but the Flash scene had a few key aspects that we haven't quite figured out how to recapture yet.
Your article is on the front page of Hacker News; congrats on once again making the big leagues. ;)
I had seen the films but never knew the name or story of the artist until now, so thank you. Xiao Xiao, say what you will, was very well done. Though its virality was also a product of its era.
There was a period of almost a decade during which hosting live action video was an order of magnitude more expensive than hosting vector animation due to the enormous file size differences, and it loaded far quicker for people too. So today's influencer landscape was simply impossible, and viral films tended to be animated. When Flash was abandoned by Adobe, and Newgrounds failed to solve the monetization problem well enough (aside from the few creators that they directly sponsored), artists moved to YouTube en masse, where there was no longer any file size advantage for animation. Adobe Animate may be Flash's direct descendant, but there is no longer a way to share an awesome animated film online that weighs under a megabyte and looks sharper than a 1080p YouTube video. I guess there's (in theory) HTML5, but the apps are nowhere near as user friendly for artists, and the ecosystem does not exist. Newgrounds signed its death warrant by agreeing to play on YouTube's (much more expensive) turf by supporting regular videos. It was never going to be cost-effective. Even during its heyday, it barely was.
If one did a survey of various popular or acclaimed artists of that era, I wonder what percent of them were able to keep working on basically the same sort of thing they were doing then, and what trade-offs they had to make. So many of them crashed out for one reason or another (or sabotaged themselves... Looking at you, chluiad and Ola Bergner...). At least some managed to transition to the Patreon model (e.g. SexualLobster).
Thanks so much! We were amazed by the response on Hacker News -- this one very much seems to have struck a chord with folks.
Really appreciate the thoughts on Flash as well: great points about the reasons for its success back in the day. It was basically perfect for that moment in time. Something we find fascinating is the group of people who jumped from the Flash scene to other parts of the animation world, like Sasha Svirsky or (in China) Busifan. Huge talents grew out of it, even if some of them left behind their roots to do it.
This is a great article. I remember those days fondly! My friends & I were in high school & discovered Xiao Xiao & similar shorts & were greatly inspired! We found a website that was like a "digital flipbook" that let us make our own, much more limited, stick figure toons. They were pixelated knock offs done in the computer lab at school after we finished our class work or at home while we messaged over AOL AIM. They didn't compare to the originals, but the spark had been lit! I had a blast. The full website went away & all the cartoon shorts were lost. But our excitement watching Xiao Xiao is something I remember well! Thanks for sharing this story behind the scenes.
Thanks so much -- happy you enjoyed the piece! Really appreciate these stories from the old days as well. It's been great to hear from folks who caught the Xiao Xiao bug at the time and got inspired. The series was some kind of perfect fit for that moment.
So good as ever.
Thanks a ton, Jon!
Is there a way to get past the Work Proof to watch The Night Boots?
Unfortunately, that streamer locks itself to animation students, pros and press -- we wish it was more widely accessible! With luck, The Night Boots will be publicly available soon, now that we're entering Oscar season.
sigh...........
Such a cool post, thanks for writing this!
Thanks so much -- very glad you liked it!
Now I can see where things like Animator vs. Animation came from.
For sure -- a ton of big series were directly inspired by this one. Animator vs. Animation is one we saw mentioned a lot in the discussion around this article, and it was very much a product of that time.
It’s so frustrating to think about such a talented artist having his career essentially stolen from him by a giant corporation. Over what I’m sure is an amount of money that would barely make a dent in their bottom line. He should be choreographing scenes in movies!!!
It's a really shameful incident that should be more widely known. If Nike and their ad agency loved the Xiao Xiao concept, they should've paid Zhu to be involved in the campaign himself. It's only right. But, if nothing else, hopefully he understands the impact he had. His work was genuinely game-changing, and he inspired more people than most artists could dream of inspiring. We also hope he's doing all right for himself these days -- the most recent update we've read said he was still working in games, but we don't know what he's doing now.
Another great post
Thanks so much! Really glad you enjoyed this one.