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.

Quiz #2

1. You'd want to convert a frame to a keyframe if you need to make that particular frame a particular instance in the animation (i.e. the beginning frame, end/result frame).

2. To convert it, you can simply right-click the frame in the timeline and select Convert to keyframe.

3. Easing in is an effect you can set for a motion tween that makes the object start slow and end fast at certain rate depending on how you set it. It is used to make things seem more physically believable (i.e. when you nudge something down a hill). The numerical value of easing out is a negative number.

4. Easing out applies the same principle as easing in, only it makes the object start fast then end slow. Again, it's used to make the movement of an object appear more realistic (in this case, like if you nudged the object on an even surface). The numerical value of easing in is a positive number.

5. To motion tween color, you just set up your object as one color in the first keyframe of the animation, and then set it as another in the last keyframe, and create a motion tween between the two.

6. To make an object move along a path, you would put a motion guide in the animation by selecting the first keyframe of the animation and clicking the motion guide button. Then you would draw the path and attach the object to its beginning and ending points, according to the animation.

Project 1

The first project was supposed to be practice of what we went over in the Flash program in class the other day. It was supposed to make use of a couple different motion tween tools which included moving an object in different ways. I chose to depict an object falling down, as it sounded like I could fulfill the assignment effectively this way. I used this cassette tape graphic I made in Illustrator and drew out some quick sketches of the scenes to be in the animation. The tape was to slide across a table, where it would meet an incline, then tumble down a rocky slope and finally into some water. This last part was to be animation frame by frame, so I decided to make it look like a silhouette. I didn't quite make the silhouette look quite the same as the first tape graphic in terms of proportion, but I ended up leaving it the way it was because it made the tape look scared or something.

Quiz #1

1. The difference between a symbol and an instance is that a symbol is basically a core shape that is stored within the flash program that you can copy and use multiple times, whereas an instance is like a certain state of that symbol that may be singled out either because it has changed shape or position or that it is going to be changed.

2. The two main reasons that people use flash are to animate objects and the file size is manageable.

3. The difference between a frame and a keyframe is that a frame is one state of the objects at a given point in the animation, while a keyframe marks important moments of the overall animation, like start and end.

did I fail?