

Fuzzwich (YC summer 07) launches a new look and previews Animator - seekely
http://www.fuzzwich.com
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!
======
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!

------
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.

------
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!

------
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.

------
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.

------
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.

------
far33d
Very cool! Glad to see someone trying to bring animation to the masses

------
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).

------
bfioca
awesome new look guys, huge evolutionary step. Love the twisp and catsby
annimation, too. :)

------
mcxx
This is really awesome. Best of luck guys!

------
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.

------
aswanson
Thank you fuzzies. You have made what I plan to do much, much easier.

------
shawndrost
fyi, the favicon is still the old logo

