I thought I'd post one of the Flash pieces this morning. I created it earlier this week during my Flash class. If you're getting into Flash, the cool thing about it is that the animation is generated by a 1-frame movie clip using ActionScript. The red dot is a movie clip so that the script on the main timeline can move it around, and the red lines are drawn on the fly using lineTo. The grey dots are duplicates of the red dot, colored and alpha-faded to leave a lingering trace. The numbers in the dynamic text boxes represent the x and y coordinates of the ball each time it stops. If you leave it running long enough, it will slow down. I figure that's because more and more line segment objects are being created.
By the way, the movie requires the Flash 6 player. (This was a FlashMX class.) You can get the new player here. Too bad the installed base for the 6 player is only about 30%... The dynamic text fields don't work in the Flash 5 player, so I'll make a different version for later...
While I was getting my files ready for the blog, I scaled a couple of movies down, and found them to be really lacking. Oh well - more tweaking to be done... I've run across this before with some of my Photoshop stuff. You have to be really careful to at least check your work at the final size. A lot of the nuances can get lost when you shrink them.
A classmate of mine from The New School works very well at small sizes. He actually likes it. I'm still into larger pieces, but I'm getting the message. I'm flattered, because he's planning to use a few of my pieces for his new 'zine Narcolepsy Arms. They're still in pre-production, but I'll be sure to post a link as soon as they're open.
Speaking of which, Dial Magazine (an online magazine of the New School) is featuring one of my Photoshop pieces in their "Pictures" section. Since I'm a "B" my image comes up first. I think they scaled the image up, so it looks a bit more pixelated than it should, but hey, it's a public offering...Yes, I know it says "Spring 2002." I think that's because I was in a Spring course when I created the piece. They just put it up last week. Yes, even though the web's technology can be very fast, editorial processes can still take a long time.
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Another D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival is coming this weekend. I think we'll go over on Saturday. I'm looking forward to some input and inspiration.
Last night, we went with Warren to the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre. They specialize in an Improv form called "The Harold." It's much more interesting than some of the other improv and comedic forms I've seen. Warren thinks I ought to take some classes there...
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A friend of mine sent this e-mail out this morning. I thought I'd share it with you as-is.
Date: Fri Oct 18, 2002 12:13:20 AM US/Eastern
Subject: random report - war deaths in europe by decade
dear random suspects
thought you might want to chew on this too
as we continue repeating the same mistakes over and over
- and the future wants to know what have we learned and why
not
War Deaths in Europe
by decade
1900-1910: 5,000
1911-1920: 20,000,000
1921-1930: 3,000,000
1931-Sept.1939: 500,000
1940-1949: 49,000,000
1951-1960: 100,000
1961-1970: 2,000
1971-1980: 2,500
1981-1990: 3,000
1991-2000: 260,000
be well
geo
art of living is making your life an art
Update on the Flash stuff: There probably won't be a Flash5 version of the little gridball piece I wrote. The animation relies on the onEnterFrame event, which is new to FlashMX and the Flash6 player. Interesting that the error message I received when I first tried to convert to 5 only mentioned a problem with instance names on my dynamic text fields! When I set the publishing preferences to Flash5, the ActionScript editor highlighted all of the unavailable features. That's when I saw the problem. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll go back and figure out how to fake it in Flash5, but it's a lot of work to support a version that's going by the wayside.
One word: Flash.
I've been working solidly in Flash MX for the last couple of weeks, and I'm having a blast. Crossed one of those thresholds where the the linguistic idiosyncrasies and scripting constructs of the ActionScript syntax started to melt away. I'm getting very jazzed about what I can build. I don't have FTP here, otherwise, I'd upload something right now.
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You know something interesting is happening, when PC magazine, a particularly Windows-centric magazine, makes iMac an editor's choice.
"The iMac isn't just about hip style—it's a bold reminder of Apple's ability to design simple-to-set-up computers and bundle essential and appealing applications."
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Meanwhile, in DC, it appears that the sniper has struck again. I wonder how long it will take to catch the guy. (Yes, I'm assuming it's a guy.) And I find something curious about the coverage: The Post is refering to him as the "Psycho Sniper." If he's psychotic, doesn't that make him insane? If so, wouldn't it be contradictory for the same paper to be rooting for his conviction and execution (assuming he's caught and brought to trial)? Ah, but then maybe the editorial staff believes that not guilty by reason of insanity should not be an allowable verdict... Why not avoid painting the guy as crazy in the first place? Maybe crazy people aren't the ones we need to fear.
Well, break's ending... maybe more later.
