Choosing flash/openGL/other animation for an andro

Question

I need to add some animation to the UI of my application. Something similar to the Talking Tom application that is all the rage these days. I am a complete noob to animation, so had the following questions to zero in on a particular platform before I began with any development.

1. Out of Flash/Rendered Images/OpenGL which one would be the fastest to implement (assuming that I have a graphics designer to do the drawing)?
2. If I was to go with flash, would I still be able to interact with the application or will it be more of a one-way play-and-stop kind of animation?

I have looked over a lot of questions on SO about this issue and have not been able to make up my mind. Any help is most welcome.

Answer 1

Talking Tom is a 3D animation. You will not be able to get that to work on a mobile device with flash. Adobe has an update pending - Air 2.7 - that promises great performance improvements and support for Open GL ES. That might to the trick when that comes along. ANd designers are comfortable with the adobe toolset.

However, if you don't feel like waiting, you will need to look elsewhere. REndered images - know in technical circles as video - will make you app very large, slow to download, and not very interactive.

So you are left with openGL. That should work for you. There are a number of solutions that use open GL. A popular choice for games and animation is UNity3D which has great support on android and iPhone. ANd the toolset is very designer friendly.

Answer 2

Flash is by far the easiest, but it won't run on all phones.

http://www.adobe.com/products/air/systemreqs/#mobile

You can build in a lot of "functionality" using actionscript.