Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

Why the web needs Flash

Back in 1998, inspired by a combined love of Alfred Hitchcock, Saul Bass and the grammar of cinema, I created a little project called Pyscho Studio which let people reedit their own cut of the infamous shower scene from Psycho. It was made in Flash 4, before there was any kind of video support or anything like that, but it was a fun little challenge.

Anyway, people seemed to love it and for a while it was really popular. I even sold the system here and there to other companies or bartered for things including the first Canon digital Ixus which I still love!

So yeah it was built in Flash. There wasn't really any other way to build it back then save for Director / Shockwave but Flash was already becoming more ubiquitous which for me was its main appeal. That, and how quick it was to make things in Flash together with a really creative community behind it. It simply allowed me to make my ideas come to life without having to worry about browser testing and all that kind of painful stuff.

Now it's 2010 and largely due to the iPhone et al Flash is no longer as "invisible" as it once was. When you make stuff as far as I'm concerned you want as many people to see your work as possible. With the iPhone suddenly there is another layer to the web where not everything can be seen. And I find that a sad situation.

I'm not going to get into the technical and business reasons behind this. There's far better much more informed posts about the subject out there on the web.

Quite simply the point is this. Any tool that allows for creative expression in a way that can be enjoyed by lots of people is a good thing. Even trivial nonsense like Psycho Studio deserves to be on the web as much as the google search box. Nobody should be able to say that it isn't valid.

I hope Apple and Adobe manage to sort it out. I just think we'd all be better off if they do.

http://www.psychostudio.tv/