MOTION GRAPHICS

AS3 camera, with rotation, and a more...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:36:46 +0000

Loads of people have been asking me about an AS3 camera, or one that has rotation. Well, here's one that does both...

Whoops

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:16:01 +0000

My blog has becone corrupted Normal service will be resumed...

(updated 2nd Jan 2008)

Site design update

Sun, 06 May 2007 22:18:04 +0000

I’ve been a little worried about the design of my blog for a while.

I feel adding stock photography is a poor alternative to designing graphics from scratch, and I can’t understand it when designers use a predefined template as the basis of their site.

Um... but I’m currently doing both! Not good...

Coolest Flash sites of 2006

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:27:30 +0000

I’ve been a little lax in putting up URLs to Flash sites during 2006, but there’s two sites that have really turned my head...

Useful free applications and tools

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:54:45 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by a fellow designer about finding changes between two versions of the same fla (i.e. because the later fla had a hard-to-find error in it). This is something I've come across before, and my solution involved using freely available applications. That set me thinking; I use many free applications in my day to day work. Here’s a list of my most often-used ones. (NB - I use a Windows machine)

Rosy and the lost magic of Web 1.0

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:43:14 +0000

Whilst archiving an old hard drive over the weekend, I came across the Word file for my introduction to the book New Masters of Flash Volume 3. It kinda answers many of the questions I get asked a lot; 'How did you get into writing those 20 (at the last count) books you did between 2000 and 2004?' and 'Who exactly is Ed from Friends of Ed?'. It also gives some insight into the heady days of 'Flash as a creative web canvas', a.k.a the big dot.com boom that Web 1.0 was all about.

Its called 'Rosy'.

Software as art

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 12:18:21 +0000

Not nearly as well publicized as the Macromedia/Adobe merger, but this bit of corporate news is probably just as significant to the world of Flash...

The state of Web Development in 2006/2007

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:38:01 +0000

What web technologies will we all be using in 2007? Well...

AS2.0 development gotchas

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:34:11 +0000

In the last few months I've been working on a number of largish AS2.0 coding tasks. I've come across a few problems/bugs that I've spent literally days debugging/rewriting.
Just so you don't have to go through the same pain, here's a quick lowdown on my top timewasting/obscure-but-common problems and issues, with a fix for each.

Designing motion graphics pt3: Code

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 14:28:49 +0000

The first part in this piece introduced the high level design concepts in motion graphics. The second part introduced a metaphor for code driven motion. In this part, we will look at how to convert the metaphor into code.

Why I have not posted for a while

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:10:23 +0000

Yeah, I know, my rate of posting stuff isn't that high at the best of times, but...

Designing motion graphics pt2: Scripting

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 20:06:25 +0000

Most Flash designers pick up tweening quickly because it is analogous to traditional animation. Scripted animation is harder for many designers to grasp, possibly because there is no longer an easy analogy.

If you are one of the many designers who needs that all important analogy, you need to read this...

Designing motion graphics part1: Inspiration

Mon, 22 May 2006 21:06:34 +0000

One of the most common questions I get asked from readers of my Flash books is ‘How do you start creating motion graphics?’. We’re not talking here about the actual mechanics of implementation. We're talking about the inspiration behind some of the more creative Flash user interfaces...

Click to activate and use this control

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:47:14 +0000

You may have started seeing tooltip text that reads 'Click to activate and use this control' or 'Press SPACEBAR or ENTER to activate and use this control' whenever you open a Flash web page. Worse still, the Flash page will not work until you actually click the Flash content. This makes many (all?) Flash sites appear broken...

Updates to some freebies...

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 00:18:27 +0000

Forgot to mention that the 'FashionIsSoLastSeason' site files I made available in a previous entry way back in September 2005 have been updated, and you may find the new version useful if you are trying to get your head around preloading in Flash 7 and 8...