Adobe Animate

Similar to other Adobe products, Adobe Animate is considered the industry gold standard when it comes to authoring multimedia. Formerly known as Flash, the app has been extensively used for around two decades to create rich animations.

With the retirement of Adobe Flash, most thought that would also mean the end of Animate, since after all, it is mostly renowned for creating flash content. Adobe decided to rebrand the app so that it caters to a larger crowd and let’s not forget that flash can be converted to videos that can be hosted online.

The program comes with an organized interface that features an abundance of features and tools to get you started. In case you did not use Adobe products before, then it is recommended to watch the tutorial as many times as you need to learn how to get started.

Frankly, it would be impossible to list all the features of the tool, but if you are curious you can check out the reference manual that describes them in detail over hundreds of pages. Among the most noteworthy, you can count vector brushes, fonts, timeline, transitions, corrections, so on and so forth.

As far as what you can design with Animate, the short answer would be that your imagination is the limit. Let’s just say for now that the tool has been used over the years to create immersive graphics and animations for games, television shows, cartoons, doodles and avatars.

If you are a developer familiar with JavaScript, ActionScript 3.0 or HTML5, then chances are you will be pleasantly surprised by the interactive animations you can get for various games. The scripts are written in the typical JavaScript API format - JSFL - and Adobe provides extensive documentation on the matter.

In case programming is not your thing, then Adobe offers the possibility to use code snippets to obtain the desired effects. While they do not provide the snippets, you can spend some time finding code that can enhance the behavior of objects, control the movements of characters or allow for touchscreen user interaction, just to name a few examples.

Granted, if you need to create complex and rich animations that would appeal to a public oversaturated with multimedia, Adobe Animate is the right tool for the job. Nevertheless, you should bear in mind that it is a robust program with a steep learning curve, so you may not learn the ins and outs or little perks that would reflect into your animations right away.