For more than 9 years the Developers at Smashing Ideas have been creating rich media experiences with websites, games, animations and business solutions. They have established themselves as one of the top 10 Flash developing teams worldwide.

Visit their site at:


http://www.smashingideas.com/services/

Their impressive client list includes working with Venerables & Bell to create original animations for the re-launch of Napster, unique games for the 2005 Music Video Awards, Sprite, and of course we all know Dora the Explorer! Just to name a few.

"Death to boredom. Long live fun!" is their motto.

As you explore their site, notice the small details. Notice the rollovers and interaction that holds you in their site for much longer than you intended to be there. It is FUN even if it is business.
Smashing Content is leading the industry with their innovative digital experiences with all manors of small screens; games, mobile handsets and other portable consumer electronic devices

New Media, or is there Flash in your future?

When I was doing some research for our mini project, I found some very helpful tutorials on the Adobe site. And in fitting in with “New Media-Flash for the Future” I elected to share this site with you.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/total_training_scripting_basics.html

At the above posted link, Adobe has used Flash to create an instructional training tutorial for basic action script, as we are just now learning.

Open Flash, and work this tutorial for fun. It will help reinforce what Karl is lecturing about. And it just might help you with your mini project?

On the subject of how Flash will be used to improve the future, we should take a step into it’s history. Adobe has a page entitled,

www.adobe.com/products/flash/special/flashanniversary/ .

At this link you can take a flash-back to see just how far this powerful software has come.

10 Flash developers from around the world to tell us how Flash has made an impact on their personal and professional lives.

Answering 10 questions each, they relate how they learned what they know today about the technology, how they've used it in the past and how they use it today, which features they love most, how Flash has enhanced their creativity, what lessons Flash has taught them—and which tip they'd like to pass on to other developers—and, finally, what the future holds for Flash in the coming decade.

I found these interviews enlighteneing. And each developer had his/her own idea of the future of Flash.

As Flash runs on more and more devices and platforms, I believe it will become the standard for almost every application that requires interaction.

Cold Hard Flash

Cold Hard Flash is a website for independent flash animators who do contract work including short animated features and television shows. The site includes industry news and updates and outtakes from the creations of the site's featured animators for example frog in a blender. I really like Newgrounds because of the wide variety of flash games and animation, but the work here is (for the most part) much more sophisticated and the animators are professionals.

One animator I like is Han Hoogerbrugge. He did a flash video for the London based band The Young Punx . He also did a really funny interactive site called Nails. His website also shows a flash animation he did for Sony to advertise the Playstation2. I enjoy his work because he is a very good illustrator, his work is very creative (out there) and he has a really good sense of humor.

Studio/Artist Exploration

I decided to cover a few artists and compare them. Coincidentally, they're all from Europe. Many of us are probably familiar with the work of Jacquie Lawson, (England, U.K.), who creates flash driven e-cards for all occasions. Her beautiful work can be seen for free here. Just click on any of the examples and enjoy! This is a smart way of doing business, she allows you to admire her art, but to personalize them, you're asked for a membership contribution of about $8 per year.

Besides holiday and birthday e-cards she also developed a series about her chocolate labrador(mix) "Chudleigh", which are kind of cute stories. It seems to me that she rotoscoped her dog. The clickable picture hyperlinks to "Digging for Gold" to celebrate St.Patrick's Day on March 17, with a pint on us! (Slainte, by the way, is Gaelic for "Cheers!").

My favorite e-cards are Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, from Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky and a Happy Birthday card featuring musical teddy bears on music by Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer". After watching these flash clips, I also understand better now how powerful and important audio is to animation. I always underestimated that, really! Jacquie Lawson's style comes across as classic, the flash movies are very well done, but they do not carry great glitzy pizzazz. However, it feels it will take me a great deal of time to reach even that level of skill.

When searching the web for exiting sites, I came across the website www.goober.nu and flash site of Goober Productions by Olaf Bergner from Sweden. I was intrigued by the country code .nu (pronounced "new-way"), which is the abbreviation for the Island of Niue in the South Pacific, near New Zealand. More about ".nu" here. There are such other popular country codes as .cc for Cocos and Keeling Islands (west of Australia), .to for Kingdom of Tonga, .tv for Tuvalu, both are also in Polynesia.

I was struck by the Art of Bergner, who strangely enough seems to have stopped his activities near the end of 2005. The Gooberstory (Claudia, what is it about Peanuts and the InterNut, err I mean the InterNet ;) is a fantasy presentation about peanuts, fish, and trees. Beautiful music, dazzling scenery (created with Photoshop) and sweet animations. And again the music score is so important to add power to the presentation.

A funny flash clip is Sumo, the bambooman. Watch the spooky African mask while the movie loads. Nostalgic is the Story of Nim, a hobbit of sorts who lives near the North Pole. Beautiful scenery and music will also be found there. Bergner has some nice links to other animators and flash sites, such as Surya Cosmetics (Brazil/Portugal), The Little Ninja, for those whole like animated "Kill Bill" stuff.

A third flash site, stephaneguillot.com (France) was presented by Ronnie Nadal in IMT230 last semester. I found it very impressive and wanted to also share it with you.

This artist uses fancy sound effects and music tunes to accompany his creations. I especially like the score and the quick animations made for a French ISP called NOOS, but there's a lot more to discover.

Happy Surfing!

Speared Peanut Anyone?

What the heck is a Speared Peanut? Check out the Speared Peanut website to find out. Of course their answer is.... ok I am not going to tell you : ) You have to go to the site and check it out.

I found this site while trowling Karl's list of resources. I checked out quite a few of them and really liked the Speared Peanut site. I didn't find an about us section - so I don't really know how many people work there (only two are listed to email in the what's your phone number section). They are based in Texas.

Their work is quite diverse. It was interesting to see their own website is set up in frames and this is how most of their client sites are set up in as well. So not all Flash. But the Flash that was there was very fun and expressive. I like how their page is very condensed visually. Unusual in a world where most people want more, more, more stuffed in each page.

Their work is divided into 5 sections - visual arts, music related, educational, business and fun. I really enjoyed the music section. A couple of my favorite music sites were for Garland Jeffreys (the photo page is fun), Blink 182 (just weird), Prince of Egypt and Eels (what kind of navigation is that???).

Looks like a fun place to work - too bad they are so far away.


And just for comic relief - we need to check out the Homestarrunner website. This site was built by the two Chapman brothers. Mike (the older brother) and a friend had originally created the characters as a comic book spoof of the poor quality children's books they saw at their local mall. In 1999 Mike learned Flash and turned the static characters into "live" Flash cartoons. His brother Matt provided the voices. They decided to set up a website (in January of 2001) to amuse their friends and through word of mouth - knowledge of their website grew.

My youngest son started checking out Homestarrunner in spring of 2001. So over the years I have watched the site grow and mature. As the site became more popular, they started selling t-shirts and stickers. After 3 years their father told them those magic words - "they could quit their day jobs" and work on the site full time. And so they have. The site is updated every week - in the StrongBad email section. They both share in creating the Flash development but Matt still does most of the voices. It is great to see someone succeed at something they love to do - and if you notice - their site is totally self-supporting and does not have annoying advertising all over it. Way to go!!!

Jimimon Design / Dub Selector

I have been researching the Jimimon Design studio based in London. Jimimon’s lead designer is Jim Johnstone. They do illustration, web design, and the Dub Selector. Their web clients include Open House festival, Smith & Pye, Punk Rock Blues, Vacant Clothing, and Crusader Travel.

The main site is very clean and easy to navigate. The initial illustrations work really well at revealing what style of design they do best. It seems to be kind of cartoony, with an edgy sort of rock-and-roll feel. Due to the fact that they have hardly any text, a quality I love in websites, I am going to review Jim’s “pet flash project” called Infinite Wheel – Home of the Dub Selector.

Infinite wheel is a Flash-created doorway into all of the different Dub Selectors that Jim has designed. The Dub Selectors are interactive “games”, where you press things and move things to create a live dub song. (Dub is a style of music kind of like reggae but slower with no full vocals of any kind.) The entire Infinite Wheel website and each Dub Selector was created in Flash.

Now that we are learning about animation, I am starting to see what composes each Dub Selector. I would love to see how many placed movie clips they are using. Each individual moving thing is probably a movie clip that is motion-tweened across the screen. I can tell that the graphics and audio react specifically to what the mouse does. It seems like the samples and music are quantized (timed up), and that the echo’s of the sounds you play are quantized as well. I can’t wait to learn how to use music and sound in Flash. I am anxious to learn how the mouse interacts and controls graphics and sound.

I play with the Dub Selectors all the time. I am definitely not alone in this, as the Infinite Wheel pages have been viewed over 4 million times. This concept represents the direction I want to go with Flash, which is music + interaction! This site is an endless source of inspiration for me, not to mention totally fun!

Animators use Macromedia Flash

Since we have been doing animation exercises in Flash, I decided to research flash animators and their work. Nina Paley came up in the search engine on the first page. Her site was interesting, and easy to navigate. In her biography she says she started out as a comic book artist. After a few years drawing comics for semi-underground newspapers and magazines, she struck a deal for her own comic strip with Universal Press Syndicate titled Fluff. It bored her to draw the same comic strip day after day, so she gave it up for animation. She has tried all types of animation, with many successes. Her film, Pandorama, was made by drawing and scratching directly on the film. It became a huge success. After that she produced her first film in Macromedia Flash, called Fetch, which premiered in 2001. What I like about this film is how the effects look doable for anyone who can draw just a little, and who understands the basics of flash. It even has a bouncing ball! The dog and the person are very simple shapes with movie clips attached for the motion. The eyes roll, pop, the legs churn, the shapes get large, small, they fade in and out, and they stretch and compress. This film has taken basic flash rules and made a cartoon that is witty and fun to watch. The hardest part of the cartoon, according to her bio, was producing the sound. She had to raise the money to buy the music. The animation was adapted to film, and that was a large cost as well. Her cartooning took three months, but it took three years to complete the project.

I like Nina Paley’s web site – I can agree with a lot of what she says. Not all of her animation films are light and amusing. She has a lot to say about the population explosion. Those shorts are disturbing. I hope everyone visits her site and explore her works.

In her blog she has a link to another animator who has done some flash animation cartoons that makes her stuff look elementary. The cartoonist, Adam Phillips, is not as philosophical as Nina. He is not interested in social commentary. His flash animations are about fairy tales and his works are beautiful, funny and a little naughty. He is an Australian who started out as a Disney animator in Sydney. After a few years with Disney he decided to try working on his own. He has created a planet called Brakenwood with a cast of characters. Bitey is a young satyr, and he is the fastest creature on the planet. He can be bad, and if he is, he seems to always pay a price. There are fairies, a teeny witch, and prowlies, among others. Adam Phillips creations are totally animated, and his backgrounds are beautiful. It is hard to believe it is done in flash. It is – he has written an instructional flash book to explain how it is done. Try out YuYu, a cartoon by Adam Phillips that was linked to Nina Paley's site. If you like cartoons and comics, his site is one you will enjoy.

I thought it would be interesting to look at and discuss a movie created for the business-to-business market, especially in comparison with the Gangs of New York promo Karl showed us last week, which was created for the business-to-consumer market. InQuira in a Flash is a movie that introduces InQuira, a company that makes natural language software to improve the effectiveness of call centers (the people who answer your calls or emails when you inquire about a product or have a complaint).

You might think that this piece, which is extremely simple, using primary colors and flat clipart figures, has nothing in common with the Gangs of New York piece. But both movies aim to create desire--desire to see more. In the one case, the Flash team is trying to make us want to go see the film; in the other case, the team is trying to make us want to contact InQuira for more information.

But, what these two Flash movies must do to achieve similar aims is quite different:

• Gangs of New York creates desire primarily by evoking emotion--the vivid images, the fire, the color, etc. Understanding is secondary. While there are lots of fun features for exploring the characters, history and topography of the story, we don't have to understand any of that to want to see the film. They are supportive secondary features, and therefore the Flash team has put them at lower levels of the site's architecture.


• InQuira in a Flash creates desire primarily by helping viewers understand. It does this through sparse, carefully orchestrated visual/verbal explanations. It uses emotion too, but in a subtle way: the simple graphics on white background create a feeling of simplicity and ease, which suggests "the problems you're having with your call center are solved."

My comments on this movie revolve around this tension and balance (or lack of it) between understanding and emotion.

I think InQuira in a Flash does a great job of clearly conveying just the essential information necessary for understanding. Notice, for example, how we learn exactly what they do in the first 20 seconds. Watch how they begin with the familiar and specific, then gradually guide us to new content and abstract ideas. I'll talk a bit about this in class.

But I think the decision to play so little with our emotions was a mistake. They don't make us care enough. And the look and feel of this movie is too clean for subject matter that involves the messiness of people the way a call center does. The piece would have had much more impact, in my view, if they had used some images of real customers, people like us we could relate to, at least initially and perhaps occasionally throughout. They could have then transitioned to or layered on the icons representing customer in the diagrams. In fact, the ideal, in my opinion, would be to use images and sound to convey some of the human messiness and confusion of the real world (people calling in with problems, etc.), and use the graphics to suggest that the InQuira product takes it all in and handles it with a call center process that makes everything simple and clear (overall feeling kind of like a Jedi warrior passing his hand in front of our face, changing our perception).

I'll bring another business-to-business Flash movie to class, one that uses images to convey information in a similar way as the InQuira one. While this movie has plenty of its own problems, it has, I think, more emotional impact. I'll be interested to hear what you guys think.

See ya Tues.

P.S. If you think this business-to-business stuff is boring, consider that there is a very small number of films released every year, but an enormous number of businesses (including small startups and nonprofits) trying to convey their messages and sell their services and wares. There is a HUGE opportunity to help them, especially now that we are going through a market transition which is making Flash animation--formerly practical only for a handful of large, wealthy enterprises--feasible for nearly any business.

Zack Lobisch, Daily Dancer blog

this is my blog of choice. enjoy! http//dailydancer.com/

Testing

I am testing this thing to see if it works , or if I am still lost in cyberspace.

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