Another assignment

For this last assignment, we were to use a movie clip to to control the timeline and also use dynamic text. I didn't really put too much thought into the concept of this assignment, except for the fact that I wanted to make a clip start playing in reverse when you roll your mouse over it. Well I couldn't figure out how to get the clip to play exactly from the point that it was currently at so these clips play from the beginning. But nonetheless, the user can manipulate the timeline and a text box changes when the user rolls over a movie clip. Awesome!

Concepts for new project

I want to make a project that forces the user to choose different doors (which would be movie clips of actual doors). I want it to feel like a labyrinth, just withOUT David Bowie. The only visual resources for this would be the clips I shoot myself.
heres a bit of flash that I found to be interesting: http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/interactions/labyrinth.shtml

Another project I'd like to make is one that allows the user to make a "painting" by using code. My concept for this is to destroy the reality of paint and canvas by making the process digital. Resources for this would be pictures I take of paint strokes, paint, brushes, etc.; and I would maybe look for recognizable "master" paintings. This may require the use of that JStor database. My last concept is to make this massive interactive database of my photos/videos. In essence this would be simple in its design, but labor-intensive on importing pictures and movie clips. My resources for this would be my entire photo/movie clip library, as well as a bunch of research on user-friendly data management programs. I would really like to add sound to some of these, if not all of these projects as well.

Coding Assignment

For the ActionScript assignment, I felt that the only way to achieve this task of putting all these actions into one program would best be resolved with a program like the one I created. When we were being taught how to use some of the script, I thought about presenting one object that would essentially be manipulated by the user with a series of choices that he or she could click. I decided to make the object an insect - more specifically an ant - and to let the user do things that one would maybe do to an ant - look at it with a magnifying glass, cut in in half, set it on fire - the usual stuff. This assignment made me learn that it's a bitch to get slight little things to work.

Beastie Slideshow

To demonstrate coding a button to play specific scenes in flash, I chose to create a small slide show. I basically just resized my pictures, created a button, and added some text and a logo. At first, I couldn't get my code to work - then I realized that it had to be ActionScript 2.0 or whatever and it started working. The pictures are of the Beastie Boys at Voodoo Fest 2004.

What is a computer program and what does it do?

A computer program to me (and I'm sure to most people) is a very open-ended entity. Essentially its just a bunch of words that, ran through a compiler, turns into something that is, at the very least, visually interactive and runs on your computer. I don't think that a computer program necessarily has to be something that has a purpose, but this is usually the case. In this sense, a program could be viewed as this filter that prompts the user for some sort of input, then spits out some sort of resolution.

Static Age

For our open-ended assignment, I thought about what I was (currently) trying to do with my painting and how I could translate that to flash. I've been commenting a lot about America and all the quirky things that make this country so damn great. So I decided to carry that idea to the digital world. This project represents how I feel about American TV, which is everything that it should be AND MORE. I used a lot of bitmapped image sequences for the majority of the animation. I also had to figure out this kind of tricky mask method for the static on the TV screen that took me a minute to figure out. I had some fun making this though so that's gotta count for something.

Digiscape

In trying to think about what a "digital landscape" would look like, I kept thinking about data as this sort of radiation that is always around us. For this assignment, I represented the data with words that I thought would denote things like text messages, data packets, wifi trash, and dumped code. Because we were limited to using the text tool, I felt that this "data" would be the only thing shown on the screen. I made the data creep into the plane of view from all directions until it all met up in the middle. I wanted to represent the fact that, not only do we have unseen data traveling around us at all times, there is probably an insane amount. So the animation eventually turns into this putrid black-green hole of data that has built up into this mess.