Thursday, May 10, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Flash Assignment - Theme and Progress
My Flash site is based on an anime/manga series called Naruto. The series has a very striking and bold logo and I felt it appropriate that links and headers should be in this style on my site. Fortunately to make the whole process a lot easier, I found NaruTexGen, an online tool that produces the logo-like text for you.
After I generated the text I wanted, I simply imported the images into Photoshop and removed the coloured background, replacing it with transparency. I then imported the images into my Flash scene and began work from there.
After a couple of re-attempts, I have the site structured in a much more effective way. The pre-loader also works more efficiently now and displays the percentage of the total bytes loaded (basically an indication of the loading progress).
I have been working with simple motion tweens to add life to the site, overall I'm pleased with the progress after the initial setbacks I experienced.
After I generated the text I wanted, I simply imported the images into Photoshop and removed the coloured background, replacing it with transparency. I then imported the images into my Flash scene and began work from there.
After a couple of re-attempts, I have the site structured in a much more effective way. The pre-loader also works more efficiently now and displays the percentage of the total bytes loaded (basically an indication of the loading progress).
I have been working with simple motion tweens to add life to the site, overall I'm pleased with the progress after the initial setbacks I experienced.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Flash Assignment - Preloader Problems
The idea of ActionScript interested me quite alot because I generally like to code and script things. It's not quite as intuitive as I feel it should be, but the functionality is there, you just need to learn how to unlock it.
One of my main concerns was finding example code that was written for the current era of ActionScript. Whilst backwards-compatiblity is provided, I still found that some things weren't working as they should - or at all.
After I had the basic preloader sorted out, it soon occurred to me that it was pretty boring, ugly even. This isn't so much of a concern as hopefully people won't spent too much time looking at it, however I felt that I should try and work around the problem.
Throughout my website interface I've been using a JPEG background image, which in itself is not very large in terms of file-size. The problem is, Flash doesn't seem to deal well with non-vector graphics, despite the small file size.
To make the pre-loader fit in nicely with the rest of my website, I wanted to use the same background as the rest of the interface. After brief experimentation using the 'download simulator' feature of the Flash Player, I found that loading the JPEG in the pre-loader was taking time in itself.
Eventually I worked around this problem (to some degree) by using a copy of the background image that had a much higher compression rate than that of the main interface. This had 2 effects: Reducing the time taken to load the pre-loader, but also making the overall Flash file size slightly bigger. I have decided that the pay off was worth it, from a visual standpoint.
One of my main concerns was finding example code that was written for the current era of ActionScript. Whilst backwards-compatiblity is provided, I still found that some things weren't working as they should - or at all.
After I had the basic preloader sorted out, it soon occurred to me that it was pretty boring, ugly even. This isn't so much of a concern as hopefully people won't spent too much time looking at it, however I felt that I should try and work around the problem.
Throughout my website interface I've been using a JPEG background image, which in itself is not very large in terms of file-size. The problem is, Flash doesn't seem to deal well with non-vector graphics, despite the small file size.
To make the pre-loader fit in nicely with the rest of my website, I wanted to use the same background as the rest of the interface. After brief experimentation using the 'download simulator' feature of the Flash Player, I found that loading the JPEG in the pre-loader was taking time in itself.
Eventually I worked around this problem (to some degree) by using a copy of the background image that had a much higher compression rate than that of the main interface. This had 2 effects: Reducing the time taken to load the pre-loader, but also making the overall Flash file size slightly bigger. I have decided that the pay off was worth it, from a visual standpoint.
Flash Assignment - Introduction
Apologies for the late post!
I've been hard on working on the Flash assignment and it is slowly starting to come together. I'm finding it extremely hard to get to grips with the Flash software, most likely as a result of my genetic (..blame the parents) un-creativity. I can quite happily design, code and document an 'invisible' scripting framework for a game engine, but when it comes to visual flair - I'm incredibly lacking!
So far I have the website interface completed, complete with image loaders, an embedded movie and simple buttons. One particular area I had problems with was the pre-loader. I will detail the specific problems I had with the pre-loader in a seperate blog post.
My basic knowledge of the Flash terminology is increasing, and after a while of panicing, I realised that you can actually incude animation on a webpage that's based on a single keyframe by using 'Movie Clips'. Phew!
I've been hard on working on the Flash assignment and it is slowly starting to come together. I'm finding it extremely hard to get to grips with the Flash software, most likely as a result of my genetic (..blame the parents) un-creativity. I can quite happily design, code and document an 'invisible' scripting framework for a game engine, but when it comes to visual flair - I'm incredibly lacking!
So far I have the website interface completed, complete with image loaders, an embedded movie and simple buttons. One particular area I had problems with was the pre-loader. I will detail the specific problems I had with the pre-loader in a seperate blog post.
My basic knowledge of the Flash terminology is increasing, and after a while of panicing, I realised that you can actually incude animation on a webpage that's based on a single keyframe by using 'Movie Clips'. Phew!
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