Dumb Ways to Die

Above is a wonderful short animated film titled Dumb Ways to Die. It boasts a catchy tune, charming character design, cute animation and an unexpected little public service message at the end, that make your realise that you've been hoodwinked all along into watching an improving message - without even noticing.

Dumb Ways to Die has had 51 million hits at YouTube, so the folks who made this must be doing something right. The sponsoring company was, of all things, an Australian light rail service provider, the guys who run the Metro system in Melbourne. The company is called Metro. Well, what else would they call it?

Years ago, back in the early 2000's, I and the rest of the animation department at DreamWorks sat through a presentation by Macromedia telling us all about their new Flash animation software. At the time, we were still hand-drawing our films, and the room was full of resistance to this new tool. New technology? Bah! said almost everyone - it'll never catch on.

Fast forward a decade and it seems like just about everything at YouTube is animated in Flash, or one of its many children. Hell, you can even do 2 animation in Maya now - witness South Park and its faux-cardboard-cut-out style, all lovely rendered using Autodesk's 3D animation software.

So, here we are, ten years later, and learning how to use Flash properly has finally made it to the top of my to-do list.

I'm only a decade late.

---Alex