Animate 2025?

[Willi Lopes]

Will there be no update for Animate this year?

[HarrowwInk]

Minor bugfixes are not enough to prove that Adobe will work on a future, full fledged release of Animate, especially considering they have been radio silent on a new version for nearly a year now. 

It astonishes and baffles me that Character Animator, a vastly inferior product, continues to recieve new versions where most Animate gets is just a bug fix here and there. I don't really know anyone who prefers Character Animator over Animate, and if someone does, they are just lazy individuals who use AI for everything... which sounds like the demographic Adobe are trying to appease to...

Considering this has almost been a whole year of posts now, and considering the fact we have never heard back from Adobe, despite promise after promise that something will give, I have no doubts that Animate will be discontinued in just a few weeks, or maybe even the next year or two.

Again, minor bugfixes are not enough to prove the existence of a new full fledged release being in the works. If a major release was in the works, the prerelease forums would've been updated more regularly than it has been.

The most we can do is either live with a ticking timebomb of a software or throw it away and move on in favour of alternatives that will always be better supported than Animate.

I think this shouldn't be too surprising considering Adobe has been pushing Animate to the wayside again and again and again. Not to mention how updates since about late 2019 have been increasingly getting worse and worse with the many half-baked features nobody really uses.

[John Hepworth]

well as a fan of FCP 7, I think you're exactly right that they are
following the money to the lowest common denominator...

[John Hepworth]

Oh I second that.

I end up using both of them and them compositing in either AE or premiere.

https://youtu.be/lr-c_qvqOL0?si=l9HpE_jfLxvW7YXC

[Joseph Labrecque]

No announcement yet... and I haven't heard anything official at all in private either... but I would hope people are not looking to Character Animator as a long-term solution 🪦

[HarrowwInk]

It's only a matter of days until the one year anniversary of this whole thread, and yet still not a single update has arrived on the situation at hand.

Adobe MAX 2025 is right around the corner, and considering the lack of updates, by the time the 2026 releases come out I think it's only a matter of time until something is proven. I think the most likely scenarios are either that Animate recieves no new major release as expected, or the discontinuation of Animate gets silently announced. Either way, not good.

There's a very ever so slight slim chance that there might be an Animate 2026 on the horizon, but the chance is so slim I wouldn't bet even a penny on that happening.

It sucks that Adobe would much rather chase AI than improve one of their most influential software yet, and I can't lie, Animate is definitely up there as one of the most influential, considering how (back when it was called Flash) it shaped a whole generation of online media throughout the years. Unfortunately, due to Adobe's neglect in recent times, nowadays even Jazza, a guy whose main channel began as a tutorial channel for Flash/Animate users, advises to stop using the software in favour of Toon Boom.

Adobe have dug Animate's grave long ago with the release of Animate 2020 and considering how little marketing this software recieves these days and how little resources go into developing the software (apparently even having the team merge with the After Effects team, as someone in this thread previously had mentioned), it's inevitable that the end is coming.

With the writing on the wall getting clearer every day, I recommend that everyone currently using or considering using Adobe Animate in the near future should consider looking for alternatives now and adapt to said alternative. It will not be sustainable to continue using software that hasn't seen active development since 2023, and things are bound to get worse.

I might have to switch to either Toon Boom or Moho. I am hesitant on Toon Boom due to the recent AI features being announced, however Toon Boom is industry standard, and unless that changes, I think it is important I learn Toon Boom at some point. Moho is the more ethical option for me, but it isn't industry standard as of now, so unless that changes then I'll likely be in a more difficult position career-wise. Depends how things will pan out, but I will need to do such future proofing sooner rather than later.

[kglad]

no adobe announcement is expected if animate is dead.  ie, rip.

[StasiaS]

Yeah unless they surprise us with an Animate update the future is hopeless for Animate... Good news though is it does seem like Moho is starting to creep into the industry if you wanna avoid AI (I've been seeing job postings for Moho Animators and Rig Artists). And it is much more cost effective than Toon Boom. Obviously I want Adobe to give Animate a chance, really the only hope I had was the EDAPT creators, since they made it closer to Toon Boom and Moho standards. 

[Renee @ BU]

I admit I'm still holding out hope, but I'm sure they'll be discontinuing it. Waiting this long for the announcement sucks. As to your comment about switched to Toon Boon or Moho. I absolutely love Moho and much prefer it to Animate. But, I still use Animate and I don't want it to be discontinued.

[default4mciqkld69iv]

I have a Toon Boom subscription. I learned about 90% of the program in just a month and a half.
I create complex scenes with lots of effects in Toon Boom. But I still do the main animation in Animate, since the symbol system in Animate is practically perfect.
In Toon Boom, however, the brushes are amazing — drawing in it is pure joy. Now I draw in Toon Boom and transfer everything into Animate for faster animation.

Basically, at the beginning of the year I got a Toon Boom subscription thinking I would fully switch to it.
But in the end, I now work in both programs — I couldn’t drop Animate, because it’s just faster thanks to the convenience of symbols, better mask application, and much better motion along paths (in Toon Boom it’s implemented very awkwardly).

Let’s put it this way: if you need rig animation — Toon Boom is 100% the way to go.
If you’re making short 5–10 second animations and then assembling them together in Adobe Premiere, Toon Boom is also a good fit.
But if you don’t use rig animation and you’re making long scenes, Animate is the better choice — because in Toon Boom you’ll spend two to three times more time achieving the same animation.