button, button, who has the button

Sadly, it is late, I waited too late to get help, and now I can't figure out why these animations and buttons aren't working the way I want them to.....

I should have gotten a copy of CS4 when I had the chance. I had no idea how different they were until the past week and could really use it.

overloaded

So it has been a busy and stressful few weeks with 4 exams and 2 projects all due within a week of each other... but heres a recap with pictures of what I have been developing and working on for this flash project!

This was my first attempt at the interactive flash, going from the lyrics from Bouncing Soul's "True Believers". The lyrics reminded me of something like a journal entry, so I wanted to plce them in an old worn-out looking book. Sadly, I couldn't get animations to work right... I wanted the pages to rip away to show new images and words, but couldn't get them to rip right, or cut right to rip and make it look realistic. While working on this I heard a new song that gave me some ideas... even though there was only a week left of classes to do it.

I then started working with lyrics from the song "Those Anarcho Punks are Mysterious" by Against Me!. For this idea, I wanted to go with a political aspect of segregation and seperation of high class of politics (all parties) with the poor.

Slowly developing ideas for the characters...

elite and the dispossessed

Later on in the piece when it talks about wars

deciphering SCRIPTures

Well, more script than scriptures, but thats what it feels like working with this flash stuff.

It seems like no matter what I try my first idea wouldn't work the right way... Now after spending hours putting together and thinking up my 2nd idea, I'm in the same situation again... but with a lot less time. Trying to make a journal with interactive type and pages being torn/crumbled away for the button actions isn't going anywhere...

Sunday = a full day dedicated to possibly rethinking my flash again and studying for my back2back exams on Monday :(

Forgetful Freddy

I now notice why I never had a blog before this... because I always forget about it and never really update a whole lot.

So I now have a pretty solid idea of where my interactive flash is going. I want to make it look a lot like a journal type of entry and was planning to do everything with pictures, but I do not have the time nor skill to pull something like that off right now.

The lyrics make me think of a journal entry when I read them, so I wanted it to have that feel as well. When changing to the next set of words, I want to do creative things like rip certain parts of the page away, cruble them up, cut them, burn parts of them, basically try to do some creative changes that relate to the lyrics. I'll have sketches of that and possibly a little clip by sunday night!

true believers

so after listening to many songs and reading through many of their lyrics, I've narrowed it down to a few Bouncing Souls songs. The main one I like of the 3 has been a song I've known and loved since it came out about 8 or 9 years ago. It has some of my favorite lyrics out of any song or band I've heard and feel it is a great song many can relate to! Now I just need to figure out how to make it more interactive...

True Believers

"I've met some people along the way,

Some of them split some of them stay,

Some of them walk some walk on by,

I've got a few friends I'll love till I die

From all of these people I try to learn,

Some of them shine some of them burn,

Some of them rise some of them fall,

For good or bad I've known them all

We live our life in our own way,

Never really listened to what they say,

The kind of faith that doesn't fade away

We are the true believers"

typ-o-graph-y

I have no idea what to think of or do for our next project...

I am listening to song after song for lyrics to try and think up something interactive and have no clue where to really start with any of it...

I guess I'll continue to listen to The Bouncing Souls and see where that takes me!

Progress!

So I am starting to make the scene and snails for my flash... these are the 2 ideas I've narrowed it down too. I think I am going with the 2nd one because after looking at the first one a few times it reminds me of multiple artists that use this idea (exploding dog, dan paladin, etc) and the 2nd looks a little more original and unique.

Any suggestions or ideas?? Any thoughts on what he will be doing for that minute hike to his gal?

Here is what might be my final pick for my snail. I made a few designs for different eyes he will have in the flash. Now I need to work on the mouths and motions...

Snailing along

So after some thought and experience with flash, I came up with a new idea to use for my "Time" project.

It is an idea involving 2 snails, a boy and girl... and th

e boy snail is trying to get to his girlfriend across the street. That is about all I have to work with so far, but I'm open and could use some ideas so it isn't just him running from one screen to the other! I think I may do something with the sun rising and setting as he goes, and by the time he gets to her it can be sunset and I could try something like fireworks shooting into the evening then stars start to pop out... any ideas on what could happen to him on his journey to her??

Time... to get to work!

So I've been thinking about what to do for my flash video relating to time.

I felt I had 2 solid ideas, but after discussing them and drawing them out to plan how I wanted to do it, I'm not sure if they will work out as well. I wanted to do something with a cartoony feeling to it. I want it to be fun to make and not feel like another assignment. I love to have fun drawing random humorous things, and this could be a good start to bringing some of my sketches further than just some little drawing on the back of my notebook.

One idea I had involved a godzilla/giant dinosaur thing attacking a city. While it is going on I'd have it jump scenes to a little old man enjoying himself in the park. The scenes with the dinosaur would have intense,

energetic music and the scenes with the old man in the park would be calm, even quiet with like birds lightly chirping. It would go back and forth from chaos to calm, until at the end the old man would eat a banana and drop the peel. This would combine the 2 stories because shortly after the dinosaur would slip on it and knock himself unconscious. The idea was fun and the type of thing I wanted, but I guess I need to look into a few more ideas.

So we are now starting a flash animation project, and even though I have a very vague idea of what I want to try and do, I'm pretty excited to learn the program a little better. The idea has to revolve around time so I was drawing up 2 ideas. I'll update more when I have some sketch ideas drawn out.

Until then, check out these 2 AMAZING animated music videos by Streetlight Manifesto for some inspiration.

Would You Be Impressed

We Will Fall Together

**EDIT**

I just found a link from the Flash facebook page to adobe tv that has over 250 hours of free sessions. Pretty handy when trying to learn this shtuff!

Adobe TV

Rock N Roll

My website!

So... after many struggles and discoveries my website has finally been uploaded. It is somewhat under construction... I still need to figure out a gallery for my thumbnails and have a few more things to upload and fix. Might possibly change the color and add some different graphics or faces around the boarder also. Thoughts? Comments?

still under construction

Well, the site is slowly coming into place. Still trying to figure out DW and div tags, but I'm getiing the hang of it more and more as I work with it. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll at least have the main page and navigation bar uploaded!

Any suggestions? Thoughts? Comments? Complaints?

Adobe Illustrator's tips and tricks!

For those of you that don't know, adobe illustrator has a fan-page on facebook! If you are not following it, I highly recommend at least giving it a look through once or twice. Not only does it let you know about possible shows and competitions coming up for students, but they post free vectors and tutorials on there almost every week. Here are a few links recently posted!

*How to make linear effects into vectors

*Free vectors and background designs

Logos

Figured I should finally update.

So we started using Dreamweaver the past few weeks and I am slowly getting the hang of it. Div tags, folders, and scripting are no fun to work with or try to understand.

We were assigned to start working on layouts and logos for our site, and I thought I'd share what I have been up to so far with my logo.

These are the main ideas I started with for my personal logo. I always like to mix mechanical components with nature in my drawings and I felt maybe a gear would be a good representation of that. I am also a big fan of the "steampunk" designs I see. It has a good industrial feel to it and it also represents an idea of cooperation to better something (That is a little explanation to those who always ask and wonder why I like gears :P).

After working with it some more, my final idea came down to these 2 logos. I feel like it is a good mix of my 2 main interests I have in art (mechanical/steampunk and nature), but it still needs a little work here and there.

1st post

Starting up a blog for my upcoming design class. How exciting!