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Fuzzwich (YC summer 07) launches a new look and previews Animator (fuzzwich.com)

47 points by seekely ↗ HN
This is Ryan from Fuzzwich. Check out the screencast at http://www.fuzzwich.com/animator if you have not already. The Fuzzwich Animator is the start and the foundation of our new online animation studio. We're very excited by the new focus and look forward to inviting everyone to animate in the near future. We're also very curious to your feedback, so please sound off!

24 comments

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seekely
This is Ryan from Fuzzwich. Check out the screencast at http://www.fuzzwich.com/animator if you have not already. The Fuzzwich Animator is the start and the foundation of our new online animation studio. We're very excited by the new focus and look forward to inviting everyone to animate in the near future. We're also very curious to your feedback, so please sound off!
whyleyc
I really like the colour scheme of the new homepage/site, but have a few observations:

(1) It's not immediately obvious to me what Fuzzwich is and why I should use it - I really think you could benefit from a prominently positioned tagline on the page itself ("Animation for Everyone" is good, but why put it only in the title bar ?)

(2) If your new screencast is a big play you definitely need to sell it more on your homepage - bigger or bold font / more prominence would help

(3) What's with the (wasted ?) space to the left-middle of the page ? This could be put to good use with a big SIGNUP NOW ! style button or maybe a funky image to sell the screencast with.

Just my two pennyworth - Hope some of it helps. You have a cool product - As pg says "Don't give up" :-)

hailpixel
Excellent points. I'll take into consideration immediately. Textmate is go!
bfioca
awesome new look guys, huge evolutionary step. Love the twisp and catsby annimation, too. :)
iamwil
I've always liked Fuzzwich, especially the goofy stuff that people come up with, just using the simple tools. I've used it to make birthday "cards" for people.

I can't wait to see a Geico Commerical done with Fuzzwich one day.

Ryan, make it happen!

shawndrost
fyi, the favicon is still the old logo
far33d
Very cool! Glad to see someone trying to bring animation to the masses
hernan7
Great site; I always thought that user-generated animation has the possibility to become huge. And being able to create animations from withing the browser... wow!

Like with HTML, it would be great if there was some way of doing "View Source" and be able to build on somebody else's animation.

seekely
As long as the animation creator allows it, you will be able to work and play around with any published animation you see made from Fuzzwich.
collision
Looks really good, like the new direction.

I've a quibble with your screencast though - I can't pause it. It kept stopping and starting to buffer. It'd be much better to be able to stop it like a youtube video and let it load before watching.

seekely
Yeah, we agreed. Switched to a YouTube player.
mcxx
This is really awesome. Best of luck guys!
bootload
Couple of things I've observed

- what is a "portfolio"? I think I know what you mean but it's a bit of a mouthful. Do you need a non shop-talk word to replace it?

- no controls on the playback sample I can't FF or see where in the stream I am. Do your playback mechanisms have controls like say YouTube?

- really like the "Pythonesque" animation in the demo (got a chuckle) can you show "even" more styles as you discover them?

- can you caption? If you can caption you can make comics.

I'd say there is legs in this idea because it's making what "artists" want ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=129616

seekely
We chose 'Portfolio' because we think the analogy carries well -- Fuzzwich allows you to create a portfolio of animations. We also just like the sound of 'Portfolio' better than 'Account' :).

You can do captions, and the comic world is one we are very much excited about trying to get into.

Glad you like the styles. We will try to put a few more unique animations up in the near future.

bootload
"... We also just like the sound of 'Portfolio' better than 'Account' :) ..."

Point taken. Flickr has 'sets', 'groups', smugmug 'galleries'. Fuzzwich 'Portfolio'. Are your users used to the terminology?

"... comic world is one we are very much excited about trying to get into ..."

If you do go take the time to read "Scott McCleod"s "Re-inventing Comics". [0] Scott is a great writer/illustrator (read the book) and covers so much what is wrong in the comics world. There is a gaping hole at the moment being left by technology starved newspapers. [1]

Plenty of room for improvement.

[0] Scott McCloud, ISBN 978006095308 ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/store/store.html

[1] Marvell comes to Facebook ~ http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=13246

playing_with
I wouldn't expect Portfolio" to be the same as Account*. I'd think I'd need an account first before creating a portfolio (which would be a special-purpose collection of videos I've made).
far33d
How about "reel" instead of "portfolio"?

Reel is a much more common word in the business for anything that moves (film, animation, etc), whereas portfolio implies static imagery.

aswanson
Thank you fuzzies. You have made what I plan to do much, much easier.
brezina
I'm uber proud to be a YC alum when I see this kind of talent in the portfolio companies. You guys are fantastic artists. I'm excited to see the animator take off.

After you IPO Fuzzwich, you guys should be making film.

nextmoveone
Holy crap is it easy to sink time with those animations/videos. I want to use it!
robfitz
yessir. the timing is solid and friendly. as extras perks, you can record in slow motion, fast forward, or even backwards (backwards recording + parallax leads to very cool aesthetics). once you've got stuff recorded, you can shift it around on the timeline or stretch and condense it like in video editing apps.
nostrademons
Congrats Fuzzwich guys!

One question: will Fuzzwich Animator still have the same try-before-you-register feature as the original Fuzzwich? As another comment mentioned, the value proposition isn't immediately obvious without playing with Fuzzwich, so some sort of no-risk-no-hassle trial could do a lot to let people decide if Fuzzwich works for what they want to do.

seekely
Yes. You will be able to play around with the Animator before you register (except in the private beta). However, unlike Minivid, you will not be able to save or publish until you have registered.