Flash pro at work

So I got home last night after class - and worked solidly on flash for a couple of hours, as well as working on it today as well.

Probably spent 6 hrs on it all up since last night - and I'm slowly getting better at it.

I've added two new flash things to my page, a new banner for the heading for every page - also with action script embedded in it to link to the home page. The background colour will just scroll through different colours... but will only use the colours I have used else where on the site.

Also on the "Contact Me" page - I've made a new flash "Email me" button... with a flying out plane, and then some changing text...

Coding the action script was extremely hard and very tedious... always having to look up help sites on the net to get assistance - but now it's all done, I understand the code a bit better - and it all works thank goodness!

Here's a link to the new heading and Contact Me Page - Additions

Learning Flash

I've finally been able to figure out how to embed flash into these blog posts - so below are some of the very simple flash animations I've created.

Week One -




Week Two -


This is what I am thinking of using for my "Email Me' section..


As I wrote below - I'm hoping to try and create a footer - or new header for the site in flash

Thinking of using more flash for the site

Last week in the lesson we were given a task of creating a flash animation in just over an hour.

It wasn't too hard when we had a .gif of the actual animation we wanted to create to look at for how to design the different elements of the animation - but trying to do that from scratch I think for myself would initially be a bit hard.

I would really like to have more flash in my site - at the moment I only have 1 very simple flash element which is the exact same on every page - and I'm wanting something either on every page again - but down the bottom like a footer - or I'm thinking of creating some different animations as to how people can contact me.

For example - a paper aeroplane flying from the top to the bottom of the window for an email...

And maybe some sort of changing background at the bottom of the page, or a changing heading background colour...

I've been mucking around in Flash a bit this week.. and so far haven't got too far unfortunately - but hopefully within the next week I'll have come up with something showable.

*Note - also need to find out how to embed flash into this blog site...

Brainwave

As I was discussing this assignment over the dinner table with my family, one of them came up with a pretty damn ingenious idea of using my face as the welcome page. Since the site is all about personality and everything...

You'd take various photos of my face doing various expressions, and then (they didn't know how to do this) but when you move your mouse over the certain aress of my face, my eyes would open or close, poke my tongue out or move my ears for example.

So for the next 4 hours I slaved away in my room to create this "face"!

I learnt a lot masking and saving sliced images in photoshop, as well as using the Tags - Behaviours setting sin Dreamweaver. My cousins from QLD was down for the weekend, and he was also able to give me some insight into how to correct some mistakes I'd made, and how to use various html code to create the result I was hoping for.

I also realised that the site needed to blend a whole lot more with each individual page, and what I had previously created - each page was kind of separated from the others.
I also really wanted to incorporate some flash into the site.

I firstly change the title headings of each page to use the font that the banner was using - for this I just created an image in Photoshop, typed in my text and sliced it up, and then saved the individual slices. Imported the images into Dreamweaver - and that worked fine!

I then decided to try and practise the newly acquired Flash skills, and create a simple flash animation for the links on the LHS of my page.
I just wanted a simple animation that I'd be able to create, and I'm extremely happy with the result.

I've been able to upload the site to my Arch Web Space - so until the assignment is due you can view the site evolving every week HERE

here are some screen shots as well -

This week in class we learnt how to use Flash.

I've always wanted to learn Flash because I think it can just look so fantastic when used properly in web sites.

In yr 12 I self taught myself flash for an assignment, but only basically used motion tweens and different looking graphics I'd created...
This is basically what we learnt in this weeks lesson as well, but I was still able to take away a few new tricks about Flash.

I would upload my flash animations I created - but can't seem to find a way how to do it with this Blog site...

One animations was of an olive bouncing into a cocktail glass and then flipping over, and the other was just a square box bouncing around it's own space...

New look site

I've decided to re-arrange my navigation link buttons, and to change the layout of the site.

I've designed 4 roll-over images that control the 4 different pages to the site.
No roll-over tells you what page you're being directed to, but it's all in a normal web site layout.
I've cut the lower 1/4 of the banner off, to remove the initial links I had designed.
I realised that the banner's height was just too big - filling up half the browser's window for smaller screen resolutions


This shows the 4 squares, with their outline showing, and when you roll-over one, the whole square fills in.


When you're reading the actual page you're on, then that square navigation button will be filled in to notify you that you're on that corresponding page.

Looking for Inspiration

Today I thought I'd search around the internet on sites such as flickr for pictures which I could use to gain some inspiration from, and also to have a look at pictures which might be helpful in creating my sites.

I've always been very interested in graffiti. Not the type where there are tags all over the place and on top of each other - but where graf artists have come and created some awesome looking grunge/random artwork.

So I went onto flickr and did a tag search for “graffiti” and “street art”.

I love it how these artists are able to create 3D work, and a 2D surface such as the pavement or bricks, and normally the colours that are used are extremely bold, bright and dominant colours that instantly capture the viewers attention.

I'm hoping that through looking at some of these tagged images, I'll be able to take some colours and inspiration away from the site, and implement it into my site.

Here are some of the images I particular liked.
These first 5 use bright colours, and all try to portray different ideas which the artist is hoping to get across.

(Official Link)
Uses shades or red, blue, yellow and purple to illustrate the child's expression. You're instantly drawn to the child's face, as the eyes are so large and bright in happiness. Hopefully my site will be able to create an ore factor like this one!

(Official Link)
This is the kind of graffiti I really love. It's 3D, looks as if it's jumping out of the wall, and only uses 3 shades of colour - blue, orange and grey. The final image is very sharp, and professional looking, and although it's a static image, you can't help but think it's going somewhere.

I'm hoping to only use a couple of colours in my site, but I'm making sure that the colours I do use are bright and lively, and relate to my personality.

(Official Link)
Once again a very bold "in your face" artwork that uses 4 colours - red, blue, black and white.

(Official Link)
(Official Link)

I really love the font type used for graffiti work, and I've downloaded many free fonts which incorporate this effect.
At the moment in my site I haven't used any graffiti fonts anywhere, rather I've stayed with the thick Arial font for the headings. I'm not too sure if I will change and use a graff font, but depending on the information I display in the site, I might change the fonts at a later stage...

(Official Link)
(Official Link)

These 2 images are ones that create interest and curiosity about their intended meaning.
I'm wanting my web site to be pretty self explanatory, and easy to navigate and understand, but it would be intriguing to add an aspect to the site where the user would have to think for a couple of seconds about what hey need to do, or what that part of the site is trying to convey... I'll be thinking about this idea for a while.

(Official Link)
This final image is all about attitude and power.
Our site is all about our personality, and through the skills I acquire in this course I hope to be able to employ some techniques to show off a bit of attitude and power in certain parts of my site