Final - Leo

SWF - HTML

What was your intention for your project? Did you meet that goal?
I just wanted  the mini-website look, as I wanted something a little bit corporate or advertisement.
Still needed to be me so it's about music. I was pretty rushed with life catastrophes so there is more I'd like to do with it but it's not bad.

 Please identify your symbols from a prior project.
I didn't use any prior symbols. The just don't match with what I wanted for a portfolio piece.

Did you create a nested animation? If so, which symbol is it?
I used it for the pop up text for styles and then added an alpha once I put them on the stage.

Please provide a detailed description of your process for any complex graphic.
I don't consider anything I did to be complicated.  As I mentioned I was going for a commercial. However I'm looking forward to playing with it to satisfy my inner comic-geek.

Please describe how your buttons and Actionscript contributed to assist the user.
I used a play, stop and back to the beginning buttons using musical terms. I guess really just the buttons are good in case your sound is up too loud. Okay maybe being able to replay the ad is good.

Include a general review of the drawing tools you created.
I used the standard rectangle tool to create masks and I used the pen tool to create my buttons that are guitar picks/plectrums.

Please discuss how you managed your library assets and your timeline.
I have to admit that I really just organize once I'm done, unless it gets really confusing and then I start creating folders.

Final!

swf | fla | colors

What was your intention for your project? Did you meet that goal?

I wanted to make a cute and polished looking thing to put in my portfolio and I think I succeeded, with a little tweaking it would be very suited for showing to potential employers.

I stole the buttons from my other project as a placeholder and made them look completely different, hope that counts as symbols from a previous project!

The most complex thing had to be the mask over the grass, I made an animated mask rectangle to make the grass seemingly be cut and positioned where it would hide grass around the middle of the lawn mower at the start and end of the tween.

Obviously my buttons will help the viewer because who wouldn't wanna see my cute flower animation (with ease on the foreground flowers so you can get a good look at them) and that beautiful lawnmower I made again?

As for drawing tools I used the pen, oval, and rectangle tool heavily on the lawnmower and larger flowers with a bit of the line tool for stems and paintbrush for grass.

I named all my symbols properly in the library so it was easy to access them.  And I made the animation part in it's own folder since the text part is only one frame.

Also if one is wondering why a big flower is hovering in the air at the text part that's my ik flower, you can move it's petals around.

Final Project - Brooks Burwell

Here is a link to my final project

 What was your intention for your project? Did you meet that goal?
I had a HARD time picking an ad idea and getting started on this project, so I just went with one that I would have fun with and could do without a problem which was obviously sports for me :). I was intending on creating something unique in the beginning of the ad and I think I did with the basketball player dunking a pair of tickets.  Then I had a part of the ad explain that the season was almost over, followed by the remaining games left this season and a link to the website.

 Please identify your symbols from a prior project.
I did not use any prior symbols.

 Did you create a nested animation? If so, which symbol is it?
No I did not create any nested animations, last time I had a problem with it in the actionscript and I didn't want that happening again, plus I didn't think I needed a nested animation for this.

 Please provide a detailed description of your process for any complex
graphic.
Nothing was too complex.  I guess I had a hard time making the dunk at the beginning of the animation look realistic with a real image of the basketball player.  I did the best I could with what I have learned.

 Please describe how your buttons and Actionscript contributed to
assist the user.
There is a play, stop/pause, and rewind button.  I think it helps the user if they want to watch it again or stop to read something.

 Include a general review of the drawing tools you created.
I didn't use any drawing tools... I didn't think that the images I used + drawing tools would look good together.  I wanted to do one or the other and I wouldn't have gotten the professional ad look with the drawing tools (I couldn't have drawn the basketball player, I'm not the most artistic person). But you can see from past projects that I know how to use the drawing tools.

 Please discuss how you managed your library assets and your
timeline.
I made sure everything was put in a folder in both the timeline and library.

Final Project - Amber King

| html | swf | fla |

What was your intention for your project? Did you meet that goal?

I wanted to create a flash-based 'business card'/banner that describes what I can do as a modeler, and I think that my project does that adequately.

Please identify your symbols from a prior project.

The only symbol that I reused was the flittering fairy from project 8. I imported the appearance and the flying animation, and gave it a new motion tween to make it fly around the signs.

Did you create a nested animation? If so, which symbol is it?

None of the animations are done on the main timeline, they're all inside different symbols to keep the main timeline clean. The fairy is animated with a fluttering animation and then the animated symbol is used in a motion tween in a movie clip. The wind gust is a shape tween nested into a motion tween.

Include a general review of the drawing tools you created.

Most of the objects are modified rectangles. The clouds were mostly made with ovals, and the grass was made with the pen tool. I duplicated and modified the grass symbol to make it look less uniform.

Please discuss how you managed your library assets and your timeline.

I made use of several folders to separate symbols in the library into more manageable pieces, particularly the models, which required me to import dozens of pictures to create frame-by-frame animations of them. 

• Motion Tweens: 2 sets of clouds, fluttering fairy, wind gust
• Shape Tween: wind gust
• Armature with Inverse Kinematics: grass patches. I ended up creating 4 separate grass patches with different animations.
• Audio Clip: the sign buttons have an audio clip attached to their Down state.
• Mask: there is a mask on the fairy to make it appear as if it's flying in front of and behind the signs.
• Text: The buttons have text, and the resume page is separated into columns. 
• Buttons: All of the buttons have multiple layers for the base and the text. There are six versions of the sign buttons, and four versions of the buttons on the other pages. The Website sign button links to my website. The buttons on the other pages can play, stop, and reset the animations, as well as return the user to the 'main page'
• Actionscript: Button linking to URL, and play/stop/reset/close the animations.

The biggest challenge for this project was getting all of the Actionscript to work. The handlers for the buttons on the secondary pages had to be put on the frames in the timeline that the buttons appear, and it took me quite a bit of troubleshooting to figure that out.

Project 8

Swf | fla

How did Sound improve your movie result? If sound did not improve the movie, why not?

Well, you obviously have to have a catchy sound effect when one gets an item!  So yes, this movie would not be right without this sound. 

When including sound, what do you need to be aware of to optimize your movie? What program did you use to modify your audio file?

I needed to get the compression on my filesize, I tried the raw settings to make the sound not sound as terrible and it gave me a 331 kb movie, I fiddled around with things more though and got a very small 44 kb file.  I didn't use a program to edit my file since it was small and manageable already being a teeny 4 second 8-bit file.  It would sound terrible if it was compressed even more.

What were your intentions in creating your masks? Did you achieve these goals?

I wanted to make a fancy "Item get!" screen and I got one!

Did you think the stop at the end of the movie will improve the users experience?

Of course, who wants to listen to a 4 second clip over and over again?  Annoying.

What challenges and benefits did you experience using sound and masks to your movie?

 At first I was going to have moving confetti under the mask but I couldn't read what it said then.  Masks can be pretty visually appealing and used in creative ways.  My challenge with sound was 10 seconds of trying to increase the frames of it without it doing strange things.  Benefits to sound include a fun new way to communicate to those interacting with your swf.

 Please share anything else regarding your experience.

This flash is a reference to a video game called Cave story, that is all.

 

Project8_Leo

SWF

How did Sound improve your movie result? If sound did not improve the movie, why not?
Well it was always missing a dramatic sound, so I was very hopeful the whole time when creating it.

When including sound, what do you need to be aware of to optimize your movie? What program did you use to modify your audio file?
I used audtion, as I already have it, but I have to admit, it's overly complicated and I hadn't used it in a couple of years actually. Anyway I converted it to mono and downsampled it to reduce the size.

What were your intentions in creating your masks? Did you achieve these goals?
I admit to playing save and just did text wipes, but I'm still pleased with the results.

Did you think the stop at the end of the movie will improve the users experience?
Having a sound go on and on is one of the most annoying things a website can do so yes it's an improvement.

What challenges and benefits did you experience using sound and masks to your movie?
It hadn't quite sunk in with the lessons, but having applied it to my own stuff if makes much more sense.

 Please share anything else regarding your experience.
I've had a rough couple of weeks so I admit I sped through these last lessons and plan to revisit them.

Project 8 - Amber King

| html | swf | fla |

How did Sound improve your movie result? If sound did not improve the movie, why not?

I feel like including sound helped enforce the ambiance I was trying to create, a peaceful forest scene.

When including sound, what do you need to be aware of to optimize your movie? What program did you use to modify your audio file?

I mixed the original file myself from http://naturesoundsfor.me/, which allows me to set the length of the file I want, but it exports the file in .ogg format, which Flash does not read. I ended up using an online audio file converter to convert it to mp3. There was one particular sound that did not convert for some reason I don't fully understand, so I think next time I'd use a converter program that I have a little more control over.

What were your intentions in creating your masks? Did you achieve these goals?

I wanted to create the illusion of depth by masking a few trees in the foreground. It's subtle, but I think it works nicely.

Did you think the stop at the end of the movie will improve the users experience?

Since I didn't go to the effort to make the animations loop, I think it improves the experience by not having a jarring stop and start.

What challenges and benefits did you experience using sound and masks to your movie?

I knew what I wanted to do with the sound when I started making the file. Masking was a little more complicated, and I found myself wishing I could be a little more subtle with it, such as making the fairylights more transparent in places but not fully covering them up. If there is a way to accomplish this, I couldn't figure it out.