Vyond (2014-present)

Vyond (pronounced similarly to "beyond"), formerly known as GoAnimate (2013-2018) and Go!Animate (before 2013), is an animation site, which is used for drag-and-drop animation which is similar in fashion to PowerPoint. It was founded in 2007, and the website was later launched in 2008. It was founded by Alvin Hung to create entertainment for his family. This page will discuss how the website has become since grounded videos plagued some of the internet beginning in 2014, but it will also discuss the problems that the website had before its downfall.

Overall
Note: Do not attempt to add anything about its community, as it does not affect the quality of the site. Use this site instead.
 * 1) Very rushed and cheap-looking stock animation. It can hardly be considered animating since all you do is drag and drop in an almost PowerPoint style.
 * 2) Many animation errors.
 * 3) The site has monotonous, generic, and barely-natural-sounding text-to-speech voices from providers to the likes of Amazon Polly (formerly Ivona), Acapela, Cepstral/VoiceForge, Oddcast/Nuance/Loquendo, IBM Watson, etc. While voice recording is possible, the TTS voices are overused to the point where videos with actual voicing can be somewhat very rare.
 * 4) * Some voices (like Emma and Joey) have been "enhanced" in recent years, which has only made them sound even more robotic.
 * 5) While most of the themes from the site have decent lip-syncing, the lip-syncing is poor for some themes like Cartoon Classics, Stick Figure, Anime, Lil' Peepz, Chibi Peepz, and Business Friendly. For example, when you apply voices to the characters from Cartoon Classics and Stick Figure, their lips don't even match up with the voices, and sometimes they don’t even move at all, mainly because they were made before when the TTS voice feature was added to the site; with the Lil' Peepz, Anime, Chibi Peepz, and Business Friendly themes, they match up with the voices but not the emotions. The mouths are always the same when the characters are speaking.
 * 6) For most videos, Comedy World (one of the website's themes, no longer available as of 2016) is overused. There are a few things Comedy World had over themes like Business Friendly in the eyes of users. These include having detailed outlines and decent body proportions, plus the ability to move and scale parts of the head to make more accurate characters. That said, Comedy World suffers from limited character actions and choices for the body. With these limitations, the theme is notorious for stuff like characters pointing to grab or hit something, fighting or tantrums being represented by the character dancing while angry or crying, and "dead" people just being asleep, with a smirk on their face.
 * 7) * It was also a blatant rip-off of Family Guy's animation style, especially with some of the backgrounds traced or referenced from scenes of that same TV show.
 * 8) Constant frame-rate drops in some videos, thanks to the software being run on Adobe Flash at the time.
 * 9) * Even the Video Maker itself can also cause frame-rate drops, making the video maker unusable.
 * 10) The site has completely lost its charm since 2014 and is nothing like how it was back in 2007-2013.
 * 11) An update for Vyond in May 2021 deleted a bunch of old accounts that do not have a subscription, resulting in old users retiring for good.

List of updates that caused Alvin Hung to be hated

 * 1) He removed the GoPlus ability, a cheaper option for hobbyists. Ironically, a former slogan claimed GoPlus offers things for non-expense. There's speculation that GoPlus was significantly less popular than GoPremium or GoTeam.
 * 2) Removed voices twice (the first time was in 2015 and the second time was in March 2016 without any notice). Rumor has it that they decided not to renew certain voices and move on to new ones.
 * 3) Discretely upgraded to HTML5 in January 2016, when in reality it was only the player that was HTML5. The HTML5 update came nearly two years too late in December 2017 with the announcement of the new video maker.
 * 4) Closed down GoAnimate4Schools for no valid reason. They said it was due to Flash, yet they refused to update it for HTML5 due to time constraints as Vyond was rushing to phase out Flash content and they would need to spend more time to rebrand GoAnimate4Schools if they were to keep maintaining it.
 * 5) Removal of the HTML5 preview and video player.
 * 6) Turned the website into a business site also in 2015, he removed fun features and turned the website into a business one for no good reason when he could've had one side of GoAnimate for hobbyists and the other one for professionals, although it is justified as the hobbyist userbase is overrun by toxic users at the time.

List of updates that caused Gary Lipkowitz to be hated

 * 1) The new video maker, Vyond Studio, was set to default.
 * 2) The Legacy Video Maker was shut down on December 16, 2019, causing a lot of Vyond users to move to other apps/websites (Wrapper: Offline (an unofficial port of the LVM), Plotagon, MovieStarPlanet, Google Slides/PowerPoint, Papa Louie Pals, Scratch, Gacha Life, etc), although it was justified due to the Flash Player phasing out by January 12, 2021.

Why GoAnimate for Schools Sucked

 * 1) It was the same thing as Vyond, but more restricted to schools. And believe it or not, barely anything had changed from Vyond other than the themes.
 * 2) The site claimed to be blocked from other websites or social media yet there are lots of videos made with GoAnimate for Schools on YouTube. It's likely users just recorded their videos with programs, like Bandicam.
 * 3) Despite what they said about profanity being blocked, the site lacked a swear filter.
 * 4) They said the price was low, yet the yearly subscription was $79 (though, it can mostly be blamed on the fact that they never bothered to update the tutorial video on how to use GoAnimate4Schools as the website used to be cheaper in its early years).
 * 5) * To add insult to injury, there are better educational sites out there that are free.
 * 6) It didn't teach kids anything educational, aside from teaching kids how to make animations.
 * 7) They said there was nothing to download on this site yet they added a download option.
 * 8) They also said it was school safe yet it is still possible to add guns and weapons to the site by simply getting a picture of them from Google Images.
 * 9) * The reason for not allowing guns and weapons could be debatable since gun safety is an education topic.
 * 10) They added invalid reasons to shut down the site. They mentioned Flash shutting down yet they upgraded Vyond to HTML5, although, once again, this may be because they were rushing to phase out Flash content and Vyond had no time to update GA4S to HTML5 and they had rebranded the site if they were to still maintain it.
 * 11) Just like Vyond itself, it had poor lip-syncing (on some of the themes), cheap animation, and robotic-sounding TTS voices.

Vyond

 * 1) The website was decent until 2014.
 * 2) Some good Vyond videos aren't grounded video related such as "Caillou Gets a Dog" which was heartwarming, and the 5-part series The Bikini Proposal by David Arandle/The Extraordinary Tourist (e-tourist).
 * 3) Some videos can even be funny, though not always in ways the author intended.
 * 4) Some of the themes (both retired and current) like Business Friendly, Whiteboard Animation, Cartoon Classics (as well as its sub-themes Holiday & Seasonal and Monster Mayhem), Lil' Peepz (and Space Peepz), Video Infographics, Common Craft (a collaborative theme with an instructional video company of the same name), and the new theme Contemporary are pretty decent to use since they have more character actions compared to Comedy World.
 * 5) The Character Creator is kinda fun to use, especially that of Lil' Peepz, which has the largest variety of character customization options.
 * 6) Great music, even though most of the hallmarks had been retired in previous years.
 * 7) * This also applies to previously licensed songs:
 * 8) *# "Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs" by Porpoise from their album III' (Cartoon Classics theme-exclusive)
 * 9) *# "Peace on Earth (Same Place)" by Andrew Vavrek of Tryad from their album Public Domain.
 * 10) *# "Recipe for Riches" by Roy (off their album Haters Eat Hay) and "We Own Christmas" (Holiday & Seasonal theme-exclusive)
 * 11) *# "Smell Isn't Everything" by Sinkhole (from their third album Core Sample)
 * 12) *# "Tibetan Monks Playing Fuzzy Bass Tablas" by The Orientalist (off his only album 1000 Sounds Lotus)
 * 13) *# "Salient" and "Swimming" by Walter Wall (off his album Exploration)
 * 14) There are a couple Vyonders that are actually good and non-toxic, and they act mature, for example:
 * 15) * Canadian Scout/Kaneedian
 * 16) * GoTest334
 * 17) * MimeFan2020 (Who left Vyond after 2019)
 * 18) * VittorioTheVyonder2003 (Nowadays, he also left Vyond in circa 2022)
 * 19) * Samster5677
 * 20) * TBGT Studios
 * 21) * PaperLuigi99 (Formerly)
 * 22) * CyansWorldCartoon (post-2019 - pre-2022)
 * 23) * BrentAnimate
 * 24) * GoTube
 * 25) * CrimsonMonsterDude2005
 * 26) * Tboneodeth Productions
 * 27) * CatOceanPearl6472 (Nowadays)
 * 28) * NoahToonsAnimator
 * 29) * SamCraft10
 * 30) * SuperYoshiAnthony
 * 31) * RadicalStormTooner177
 * 32) * Kenny Animate
 * 33) * IT-Saac Studios
 * 34) * Blue Enterprises
 * 35) * LaughingBob100
 * 36) * OMIGavin4life // GavinTheCommentator2006
 * 37) * Benjamin's Nostalgic Corner
 * 38) * Roku Kun The Vyonder (Nowadays)
 * 39) * TheColossalD
 * 40) * Brendan Barney (Nowadays)
 * 41) * Pappy Animate 2012
 * 42) * NathanSaturnBOI
 * 43) * MJ The Spirit
 * 44) * MTE
 * 45) * DuchessDoesWrapper
 * 46) * Dallas Toons
 * 47) ** Especially satirists like NotSmirks, who is known for creating the hilariously surreal Uolliac videos.

GoAnimate for Schools

 * 1) It was better in its early years, as it was a lot cheaper and the website wasn't full of generic grounded videos, behavior card day videos, etc.
 * 2) Despite being $79 to use to program yearly, it was way cheaper than the original website. As Vyond sells yearly for $299.
 * 3) There are some good videos made with this site.
 * 4) The concept for the website wasn't too bad, as it could have been a way of teaching children how to make animations.

Videos
nvwBslcB3bo HtP1v7D_NOA EN_YHDdGnok l0XXaVIrC1Q iCMGVs_qLv8 Mvrqoc_I4Is