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Flash Animation

Like many people in this business, I have fallen under the spell of the animation program called Flash. The program has unlimited potential for creative expression, and best of all, once you make something cool, you get to make it move. I've been a Flash user since version 4 and while I've never worked in it full time at the professional level, I have continued to improve my skills over the years. The program is too much fun to put down! Currently my Flash use is limited to teaching in a technical college where I teach beginning, Intermediate Flash and advanced Flash.

The animation running above was inspired by an awesome animation featured at www.sigma-photo.com. When I'm looking for inspiration, I go and study the pro's. I'm not sure who made the animation at sigma-photo, but they are some inspired animators, and figuring out how to use that technique on my own movie provided me with a pleasurable afternoon of work. Oh, by the way, they make a great camera lens. I have one on my new Canon Digital Rebel XT.

You will need the Flash Player to view these movies. It is a free one minute download.

This is an all Flash website I built while learning how to write the new Actionscript 3 language. I learned this technique while watching 22 videos at www.lynda.com. Adobe turned Flash on it's head with this latest version: CS4. The new language is completely different than Actionscript 2. Rumor has it that Adobe converted Flash to the new language because they were already using that language for interactive Acrobat files, and they only wanted to support one language.

This slideshow was built using a plugin for Flash. You will need to edit an XML file, but XML, at least as it is used here is very easy and looks a lot like html. I took these pictures with my Canon 50D. David D. and I spent 5 days at Smith Rocks and discovered a common love for live music. In this slideshow, David plays guitar, while I accompany him on the harmonica.

xml flash slideshow

This flash slideshow was built using a plugin for Dreamweaver. This is the same xml slideshow builder used by the major media sites like the Tacoma News Tribune. This slideshow features pictures from my Christmas 2008 rock climbing vacation in Joshua Tree California.

Triple Scroll Flash Slideshow

This flash slideshow features 3 dynamically generated movie clips of 8 thumbnails which slide into position while sliced into thirds, going opposite directions.

digital video production

This is a banner similar to the one above, but the animations on the first four pictures are done with scripting, instead of motion tweening. Using actionscripting for the motion makes the movement easier to edit. The photography was done by Mike Sweeten, one of my students in the Media Design and Video Production program at CPTC.

rocket game

I built this scoring rocket game while working my way through a book on flash called "foundation actionscript animation, making things move" - Keith Peters. It was the first time I'd experimented with velocity and bounce. It also uses a bunch of trigonometry functions like sin, cosin and radians. I'd like to say I understood the trig, but it's been a long time since high school. The high end math stuff was only 4 lines out of the 95 lines of script.

Carousel Slide Show

This carousel was a project one of my students found online. It looks so cool I decided I had to work it as well. It uses a lot of very advanced actionscript combined with an xml script.

walking man

I made this guy walk while working my way through a book on Flash Character Animation called: "Flash Cartoon Animation, Learn from the Pros" by Peaty & Kirkpatrick.The book came with all the files, but because I knew I needed the practice, I recreated them all from scratch, working mostly in Illustrator before going to Flash for the animation work.

alarm clock

This is an alarm clock I built as a lesson plan for my intermediate Flash class. The actionscript was all created from scratch.

maze game

This is my first game in Flash. It builds on skills I learned in a great book on Flash called, "How to do everything with Flash 5". This was also the first time I worked in the expert mode of ActionScripting.

ray of light

I learned this technique in a Flash book. The book however, did not explain the details. In an animation like this, the details are everything. Pretty cool for 13 Kilobytes.

ray light 2

This is the same file, but altered with my name in lights, and some other enhancements from Illustrator. 28 K.

Flashlight

The Flashlight is a popular Flash technique. Here is my variation without using masks. This one also permits you to adjust the size of the beam. Ya' gotta love this program! 18 K

printing press

There is a cool animated printing press in this one, built entirely in flash during my first 2 weeks with the software in 1999. 22 K

moving water

Using a clever technique I picked up on Flashkit.com, I have animated the water on one of my landscape paintings. 50K

company logo

A clean intro concept using spinning type and an animated border. 61K

3D interface

Shape tweening carried to it's logical extreme. This is a lot of action for only 8K.

splash intro

This was my original intro created shortly after I graduated from CPTC with a certificate in web design; August, 2000. To see the companion side navigation, click on the link to "printing". 80K

I built the framework for its successor but have only put content in a few of the pages. Most of my freelance clients prefer an all html web site due to some of the limitations of Flash in the business environment.