San Francisco-based animator and indie director Nina Paley recently used Macromedia Flash in an unconventional manner. She used the application, typically utilized as a Web tool, to create animatimon for a short 35mm film.

Fetch!, an Escheresque romp involving a man, a dog, a ball, and a mad chase through various illusory settings, is the result of her labor. Paley says Flash became her weapon of choice on the project for several reasons.

“First, Flash is cheaper than any professional animation software designed for film, and it was very effective for this particular idea that I had because I had a lot of running cycles,” states Paley. “With Flash you can animate the cycle, then change the scale and move it back and forth, which was exactly what I needed. I also love that it's vector-based, so I didn't have to worry about the resolution — I could create a very small file and then render it at any size I wanted.”

Once Paley finished her animation in Flash, she brought her files over to Monaco, a film lab in San Francisco, for rendering out to 35mm. There, Paley and digital division manager Haunt Rama transferred Paley's files to a PNG format, which was the only common denominator file format between Flash and the lab's software. Finally, Rama rerendered the PNG files to get them into the Cineon 1828 × 1332 format.

“This is an extraordinary method,” says Rama. “People are able to create something in a vector program — there are no pixels. It is perfectly smooth at whatever size they go out to. There is no resizing necessary at all, and every line is absolutely smooth and perfect. It was a very unique and brilliant way to use Flash.”

At press time, Paley was putting the finishing touches on the Fetch! soundtrack and preparing the film for consideration at various festivals. Visit www.ninapaley.com to catch a glimpse.