Archive for October 9, 2007

My Idea…

{ October 9, 2007 @ 7:16 pm } · { Kylie Gammans, Uncategorized }
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I aim to create an interactive game, I have already produced two prior to this class but have decided to produce another to show that my skills in Flash can improve. I aim to show my improvement by focusing on my weaker areas of Flash by improving smoother animations, using more audio and video, better design and trying to include more interactivity. By improving on these skills I will hopefully be more employable in the Media industry.  

There have been a number of issues in society that have arisen lately around obesity in young children. A chef called Jamie Oliver is someone who has campaigned to ban junk foods in schools and has created a lot of media attention around this subject, so I decided to take a look at his website: http://www.jamieoliver.com/  

There is no part on this website which is really aimed at children; therefore my initial idea is to create an interactive game based around this subject to raise awareness to children about eating healthy. This game could also be used at schools. I am going to research further into this website and see ideas which Jamie Oliver comes up with to encourage healthy eating and import them into my game. I am not yet 100% sure as what will take place in my game but with the basis of my idea I can begin researching into what I feel will make this game a success.

Michelle Field - Developing my Idea

{ October 9, 2007 @ 5:57 pm } · { Flash, Michelle Field }
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For my project I have decided to create a game that will promote a campaign or upcoming event based on the prevention of littering. The project will be aimed at the young generation, ENCAMS (http://www.encams.org/campaigns/main.asp?pageid=138&sub=27) states that in 2005 it is in fact 18-24’s “that are one of the most frequent offenders with regards to litter but also one of the most difficult groups to reach in terms of changing their behaviour.” The game will also provide basic information against littering. The game could be made for an exiting site that does not already have interactive features to entice younger users such as:

 http://www.keeparkansasbeautiful.com/improving/

or

 http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/litter/index.htm

Both these sites focus on things such as recycling and littering issues. 

I aim to make the project look professional, to be persuasive, have a big visual impact and be interactive. Overall I aim to challenge myself in terms of its technical creation by learning how to make the most out of Flash and the features it has to offer.

Sound and Video- lecture (Dorota Jablonska)

{ October 9, 2007 @ 3:51 pm } · { Dorota Jablonska }
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Sound

Flash supports formats:

  • MP3- Recommended as it is small in file size and can be of high quality.
  • WAV
  • AIF (Mac)

Import sound into Flash- select File > Import into library

You can also create background sound and, if you want, you can stop it on a certain frame. (action - Movie control- stop on a keyframe which you want the music to stop)

You can also indicate how many times you want the sound to be looped. If you want the sound looped forever, put in 999999999999999 in the Loop window.

You can also play sound at certain points
Select a keyframe, select your sound from the Sound drop down menu and change the Sync to start.

Create sound control

  • attach a sound to a Timeline
  • create a sliding volume control
  • give your user the chance to control the volume of the sound

Rollover sound effects

  • Interactive
  • Informative
  • fun

Where to look for sound

  • Remember about having permission from the copyright holder.
  • sound banks online
  • useful websites

Soundrangers http://www.soundrangers.com
Sound Dogs.com: www.sounddogs.com
Sound Effects Library: www.sound-effects-library.com
Partners in Rhyme: www.partnersinrhyme.com


Control sound volume with ActionScript
http://www.flashdesignerzone.com/tutorials/t1052.php

Video

Supported formats include:

  • QuickTime (.mov)- advisable
  • Digital Video
  • MPEG
  • Windows Media
  • Video for Windows

Import and control a video clip:

  • File > Import to library
  • Click the ‘embed video’ option.
  • Make sure quality is 100 and synchronise video is checked.
  • Now you can drag your video onto the stage from the library
  • Edit mode for the movie clip
  • Add buttons from the Common Libraries (stop, play and pause)+ attache scripts to each of the buttons

Examples

 

 

Michelle Field - Talking to the Professionals

{ October 9, 2007 @ 3:09 pm } · { Flash, Michelle Field }
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In continuing my thoughts I firstly e-mailed Craig Swann who works for the interactive media company Crash Media and is a guest speaker at this years Flash on the Beach. I asked him if he knew of any exciting new features that Flash technology has developed. His reply was

“Well MAX just announced exciting new capabilities with Flash including 3d, and custom effects publishing via Hydra.”

I looked into this and discovered that Hydra is a graphics programming language that Adobe has developing for image processing, which is available in Astro (Flash Player 10). It specifically allows the use of custom filters, blend modes and effects such as shading. However, I am unsure if I will be able to gain access to this for my own project. 

Furthermore, I e-mailed Rob Townley who runs his own new media design and development company (RT Media) and I asked him the following questions:

What new Flash features most interest you and are beneficial to your work?

“I think for me the most usable features of Flash recently have been the development of Flash video. With more encoding options and the standalone Flash 8 Video encoder it’s become far more easy to incorporate video on the web.”

Are there any particular examples of your work that demonstrate this?

 “I have a very good and successful example of this here:
http://www.jonnyballrevealsall.co.uk/

This is a microsite that I built for Metro newspaper, and if you click on either ‘Watch the Show’ or ‘Watch the trailers’ you’ll be able to view the Flash videos. This proved to be a very successful campaign, backed up with HTML emails. “

As an employer what would you be looking for when taking on employees?

“If  I was looking to employ someone I would not necessarily be looking for someone with a whole bunch of skills, more importantly for me would be someone who was keen to learn and follow instruction. Obviously some web experience would be required, mainly with Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop however I wouldn’t take on anyone who was too efficient as I would prefer to mould someone to fit them into my workflow. I think web designers and developers all work in a different way to an extent, and having someone with too much of a set way of working would be hard.”

From speaking to these professionals I have gained an insight to what is currently taking place in Flash. It is also interesting to hear Rob’s views on what he would be looking for in potential employees, hopefully my next project will be able to demonstrate my ability to employers. It will be of use to me to think about the sort of features I wish to use in my upcoming project. However I will firstly need to decide what sort of product I wish to create.

Interview with a media professional

{ October 9, 2007 @ 1:56 pm } · { Dorota Jablonska }
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As part of my assignment I contacted a number of professionals to see what they think about flash. I send them the following letter:

My name is Dorota Jablonska
I am a third year Web and New Media student at UCE, Birmingham. I am 24 years old and have been studying web design for about 3 years now.
I am currently participating in the Web and New Media practice class. I have already produced a number of products in Flash. I aim to learn more into Flash in order for me to improve on the skills I already obtain.
You can learn more about me and my class mates more if you click on the link below where you find our group blog.

http://webandnewmedia.wordpress.com

As my second assignment of the module I intend to create a flash game. The game will include plenty of Action Scripts so hopefully I will manage to grasp everything and come out with some good results.

As part of my assignment I have to find someone in the industry relevant to my area of interest and interview this person.

I thought that you may be able to help me? I have a few very short questions for you, so if you’ve got a spare 10 minutes then please take a look at them

· How did you get into Flash?

· Have you created any project or websites which I could take a look at?

· Can you suggest me any other examples which demonstrates the new exciting flash developments?

· Can you recommend any websites, books, other resources for a better and successful work in Flash????

· What skills are important in the industry in your opinion???

· I intend to create a flash game similar to the Harry Potter one (Available on http://www.flash-game.net/game/2872/harry-potter.html), Have you got any tips for me?

Many thanks for your time!!!!!

I look forward to receiving your feedback.

 

As a result I got a very interesting respond from Yates Buckley, the technical director  unit9 ltd.

  • How did you get into Flash?

- from the earliest version of futuresplash, in ‘97 this was a good way to create animated content on the web that was very light

  • Have you created any project or websites which I could take a look at?

- many, please refer to unit9.com — particular favorites are the jobs we did for clinic, honda and adobe creative mind.

www.thesecondline.com

www.unit9.com/grrrgame

www.unit9.com/creativemind

  • Can you suggest me any other examples which demonstrates the new exciting flash developments?

look at Andre Michelle’s work, Tink’s blog, papervision3d, keep your eyes peeled on osflash and learn what you can from there.

  • Can you recommend any websites, books, other resources for a better and successful work in Flash?

Flash as3 is not a mature programming language, I recommend to decide if you are an interactive designer or a proper programmer and train on this basis.

The programmer should learn about: UML, design patterns, refactoring, should know some different computer languages with some familiarity

(I recommend python or perl, PHP, Actionscript, and some C++ or Java). You need to urgently get work experience with complicated large code bases and survive this.

After this you will have a very successful career.. but it is intense and requires precision and dedication.

The interface designer should learn a bit of flash, enough to make interface elements work well and should be familiar with timeline, animation etc. all the quick

dirty tricks one can use to make a nice interface. With flex a lot of new problems/solutions have emerged, you should become familiar with this.

  • What skills are important in the industry in your opinion?

Dedication to finish work at a high quality.. there is no point in just doing something, you have to do it excellently and people will note.

Learn about model view controller structure - get the online subscription to oreilly and read all about cs3 (ignore previous flash versions).

Create all the graphical elements separately and then work on the logic.. It is important to understand the fundamentals of MVC for first thing.

I also got a respond from Carla Diana- a creative professional.

  • How did you get into Flash?

I started out as an engineer and industrial (product) designer. I had done a lot of programming as a kid (BASIC, C, Pascal, etc.) and when I began rendering images for my product designs I discovered interactive multimedia by using Macromedia Director. I enjoyed being able to bring objects to life through sound, image and code.

  •   Have you created any project or websites which I could take a look at?

I have a portfolio site online at http://www.carladiana.com

  • Can you suggest me any other examples which demonstrates the new exciting flash developments?

There is a lot of great work going on. I will be lecturing at a conference in Brighton, England in November called Flash on the Beach. If you look at some of the speakers and events there and at the other Flash conferences, you will see lots of different kinds of work.

  • Can you recommend any websites, books, other resources for a better and successful work in Flash????

The O’Reilly books are always good for technical help. Other than that, there are lots of books and conferences. The Flash Forward and Flash in the Can conference are great places to get inspired and gather information. I will be featured in a new book coming out called “Pros on Flash” by Doug Easterly.
 

  • What skills are important in the industry in your opinion???  

I am not sure what industry to which you refer. “Flash” is just a tool and not an industry. There are many industries that utilize Flash for visualization. As a designer, it is important to be able to draw, brainstorm, and communicate both verbally and visually.

Content and story are the most important elements. Being clear on these will drive all your design and technical decisions.