4mations is a website made for people to upload, view and share animated films and games. The site was founded in 2008 by the Channel Four Television Corporation, sponsored by Aardman Animations and Lupus Films. As the site is targeted to adults, risque animations are often featured.
History
commissioned the project, backed by Aardman Animations and Lupus Films and it was in development for two years before its launch. The project team then sent out a call for submissions to commission some animations and the beta site launched in August 2008. The main site launched in September 2008. In November 2008 the site was taken down by Channel 4 in order to remove some adult content from the site. The site relaunched on 1 June 2009 as an animation blog featuring director interviews, user-submitted clips and news and reviews from the animation world.
Features
User accounts
The free user account includes access to upload animation films and games as well as viewing and commenting on other user's content. Uploading films and games makes users eligible for a £250 prizefund which is awarded monthly for the most viewed content.
Profile: Each 4mations user has their own individual profile page which displays their username, a description, a URL, their videos/games and the content that they've marked as favorites.
Groups: 4mations allow the creation of user groups between users with something in common. Any user may start a group and invite members. Each of the members of the groups can initiate or contribute to a discussion.
Friends: Users are able to create friends lists with whom they can share animations that they upload or find on the site.
Messages: The site provides the facility for you to send a direct message to one or more 4mations user. Depending on how the users have set their preferences, this will then send an email to the user's private email address, prompting them to check their 4mations account.
Tags
From launch, 4mations supports user-end tagging or labeling of films and game to create a site-wide folksonomy of animated content. Users can browse via tags enabling users to play content that has been tagged a certain way. This tagging can be by genre, mood, creator, or any other form of user-defined classification.
Categories
Videos can be viewed by selecting the most discussed, the top rated, the most watched, featured videos or the newest to be uploaded. Alternatively users can determine the category they wish to look at by channel or format. Games can be viewed by selecting the most discussed, the top rated, most played, featured games or the newest to be uploaded. Alternatively users can choose a category of game they wish to play.
Subscription
A user can choose to subscribe to either a tag or specific user, which are then displayed on the "subscriptions" page. Alternatively, users can choose to receive these subscriptions via an RSS feed.
