GoAnimate (formerly known as Go!Animate until 2013) is a cloud-based, animated video creation platform. It is designed to allow business people with no background in animation to quickly and easily create animated videos. These videos can be created in multiple styles, including 2D Animation, whiteboard animation (a.k.a. videoscribing or scribing) and video infographics.
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History
GoAnimate was founded in 2007 by Alvin Hung who only wanted to make an animation for his wife according to some users, and the first version of GoAnimate went live in mid 2008.
In May 2009, DomoAnimate was launched. This program allowed users to create GoAnimations based on the Domo shorts. The site closed down on September 15, 2014, and later redirected to the GoAnimate for Schools website.
In early 2011, GoAnimate became a founding partner of YouTube Create - a suite of apps available to content creators within YouTube.
A U.S. office in San Francisco opened in June 2011.
In late August 2011, GoAnimate for Schools was publicly launched. GoAnimate for Schools is a school-safe version of GoAnimate featuring dedicated privacy, security, content moderation and group management features.
In late 2011, a custom set of "Election 2012" characters became popular.
On March 1, 2012 (2012-03-01), GoAnimate launched the Business Friendly Theme, the first of the four Business Themes on the site.
In April 2012, the first business-oriented subscription plans were publicly launched. These included 1080p download, logo removal & replacement, and new business-oriented visual themes. These plans led to increased popularity and exposure for GoAnimate.
By July 2013, over ten million videos had been created using the GoAnimate platform.
On September 16, 2013 (2013-09-16), GoAnimate changed its logo, being the removal of the exclamation mark. That same day, the site relaunched with a new user interface, plus the removal of GoBucks.
At the end of 2013, the "paper cutout" assets of explainer video pioneer Common Craft were integrated into GoAnimate as a new visual theme.
In April 2014, multi-seat business subscription plans were launched, including full-featured administrative tools along with group collaboration and review. Around the same time, GoAnimate also released their next Business theme, that being Whiteboard Animation, and a publishing integration with elearning courseware authoring platform Lectora.
By the end of 2014, GoAnimate's library contained over 10,000 assets, including a new set of Supreme Court justices and settings.
In 2015, the Taiwan office was opened, making it GoAnimate's third location (after Hong Kong and San Francisco).
As of May 2015, GoAnimate announced future expansion plans included going public, but there had been no decision on the listing venue.
In Summer 2015, social network features such as favorites, comments and messages were removed so that GoAnimate could focus more on businesses & marketing.
On October 19, 2015, GoAnimate announced that it would migrate from Adobe Flash and go towards HTML5 animation, which can allow mobile device compatibility. The older, less technological-adaptable themes (or Non-Business Themes) such as Lil' Peepz, Comedy World, and Cartoon Classics, were retired as they were incompatible with HTML5. GoAnimate for Schools however, retained Adobe Flash and the non-business themes until July 26, 2016.
On November 25, 2015, GoAnimate replaced their free plan with a trial plan that lasts 14 days. After the subscription expires, the ability to create or edit videos is locked until you buy a paid plan.
By the end of 2015, the company had over 50 employees.
Go Animate 4 Schools Video
Product
GoAnimate provides its users with a library containing tens of thousands of pre-animated assets, which can be controlled through a simple drag & drop interface. Asset types include characters, actions, templates, props, text boxes, music tracks and sound effects. Users can also upload their own assets, such as audio files, image files or video files.
There is also a drag & drop composition tool, which users can employ to create pans and zooms.
Spoken dialogue and narration can be recorded directly into the platform or imported as an audio file. Characters can automatically lip-sync dialogue that is assigned to them. Alternatively, audio can be set as voiceover narration. Users can download their finished videos as MP4 files, GIFs or video presentations. They can also export them directly to a variety of video hosting sites including YouTube, Wistia and Vidyard.
GoAnimate has a school version of the site called GoAnimate for Schools.
Criticism
Despite great popularity, GoAnimate received a lot of negative criticism, mainly because of the simple useage of the product. In 2011, British animator Harry Partridge released an Adobe Flash-inspired parody video called Go Animate! - An Animation Revolution, where he criticizes the site for the fact it isn't animation at all, and is just a drag and drop site. The video wasn't received well by fans of GoAnimate, going as far as to make parodies of that video such as Flash - An Animation Revolution.
Also among the fans, GoAnimate lost some popularity in the beginning of 2016 after the HTML5 update, which resulted in the removal of all themes except Business Friendly, Whiteboard Animation, Video Infographics and Common Craft. At the same time, GoAnimate had to remove some voices because GoAnimate could not renew its licenses due to financial problems - which might have been the reason for the discontinuation of the topics. The fans of the site criticized Alvin Hung for the changes and responded to Alvin by making videos targeting him.
Grounded Videos trend
Another reason for GoAnimate's reputation are the "grounded videos" that have been made using the site and have been posted to YouTube since July 2011. These videos involve a character being cruelly punished for inadequate behavior. A large majority of these videos are centered around characters from animated shows (one prime example is Caillou, the Canadian educational cartoon character).
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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