The first prominent use of this format was by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi as a mission to bring cartoons to the globe wide internet. He had brought his creations “George Liqour” (in which was the banned charactor from Ren & Stimpy) with his dim-witted nephew “Jimmy the Helpless Idiot Boy” on their own web program. Later John did more experiments with flash animation including a deal with Icebox.com, commercials and a music video. After that, internet cartoons started popping up everywhere.

Although Flash animation creation is generally much easier and less expensive than traditional animation techniques, the amount of time, money, and skills needed depends on the chosen content and style. Distribution via the Internet is very easy and cheap compared to television broadcasting and websites such as Newgrounds and UGOplayer host Flash cartoons for free. Many Flash cartoons are created by individual or amateur artists, though it does require enough technical expertise to use Adobe Flash. Some internet Flash cartoons become popular enough to air on broadcast television, on channels such as MTV and G4TV.

In recent years more and more studios doing animation for TV use Flash, especially since some recent drawing styles are easier to do in Flash than with other techniques. TV series also benefit from Flash’s ability to organise a large number of assets, like characters, scenes, movements, and props for later re-use. Because Flash files are a vector file format, they can even be used to transfer animation to 35mm film without any compromise in image quality when bringing the cartoon to the big screen. This opportunity is used by several independent animators world-wide.

Some professional animated television series are also produced utilizing Adobe Flash due to the (comparatively) low cost of production, such as the Emmy Award-winning Off-Mikes, produced by ESPN and Animax Entertainment and Gotham Girls, produced by Warner Brothers. The Critic was the first animated television series to use Flash. After being canceled from both ABC & Fox, Atom Films created net-only episodes in 2000-2001. Some existing television cartoons such as Home Movies and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (both on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim) have switched to Flash from other animation technology, as well as the lesser-known Aaagh! It’s the Mr. Hell Show & Queer Duck from Showtime, and Shorties Watching Shorties on Comedy Central.

Because the Flash file format is published, there are a number of other software packages available that can create output in .swf format. Among these are Animo (Cambridge Animation Systems), Toon Boom Studio, and Anime Studio (was Moho from Lost Marble, now eFrontier). These frontends frequently provide additional support for creating cartoons, especially with tools more familiar to traditionally trained animators, as well as additional rigging for characters which makes it much easier to animate it.