Animated GIF programs now abound, and it's getting difficult to determine which is the
best for your web design. The hard part about designing good animated GIFs is that you
really need some artistic ability in order to make this type of flashy media work for you.
More is the pity more of us are not artists. It would eliminate a lot of graffiti on the
super highway.
We recently found a new company called Anark Interactive Media who has a terribly cool
product they call Emotion 3D. Unlike generic GIF animators which faciliate transitions
between graphics or special effects, Emotion 3D starts with the premise that you want to
capture a surfer's attention quickly and easily. What better way then to inject some
emotion into your web graphics?
Emotion 3D uses an interface which is reminiscent of Kai's Power Tools: it's futuristic
and a little strange at first. Unlike Kai's tools, though, Emotion 3D is very intuitive to
use, made all the easier with a wizard-like interface.
You start by selecting an existing graphic from the Emotion 3D library, you can change
colors or backgrounds, and then you select an emotion or action ranging from happy, sad,
fainting, dancing, and yes, even farting and mooning.
As you select and apply these attributes, your graphic is previewed in real-time. If
you screw up and don't like what you created, you can step the wizard backward, one step
at a time, or you can restart with a clean slate. Once you are satisfied with the graphic,
you can save it for future use as a template or you can export to a GIF format. We
designed the one below for this site in about a minute:
As you can see from the small samples of animated graphics above this is quite cute.
Using these critters in various positions throughout your web site can really make people
stop and look and read. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
The product would be fine if it stopped here, but it goes one step better. If this were
an infomercial, we would tell you to stop and look at these extra bonuses -- you'd be
crazy if you did not rush to your phone and buy this right now -- only three copies left!
Here's the deal: everything you can do with the 3D images provided by Emotion 3D you can
also do with your own 2D artwork. Thus, if you have a logo, you can animate it in the
same, simple way. And it looks fabulous.
Anark includes a library of fairly standard looking 2D graphics -- the kind you get
with Microsoft, for instance. I played with this and made a graphic of a piece pie spin
and dance. Very entertaining. But then I tried one of my own web site logos, and boy, was
I ever impressed. Not only could I create a very neat spinning logo, say like a popular
browser's logo, but I could add depth, shadow, color, and even make it boogie (see graphic
below for sample of salesforceautomation.net
animated logo). I'm telling you citizens, it simply does not get any cooler than this.
Of course, you can use Emotion 3D to create nifty rollover effects if animated GIFs are
not your style. It's just as simple, and one more option for you to consider.
And what would you expect to pay for all of these incredible bonuses . . . it's
currently listing for under $50. At double the price, it would be well worth it! To
download a working version, just click on the banner above.
