Stills from my Interactive story

Okami/flash inspiration

Just some pictures from the playstation 2 game "Okami" the artwork in this game is absolutely stunning and inspired me in my flash based project.

Of course my artwork is nowhere near as good as this, however i took the bold ink outlines and bright colors and made it my own.

this style can also be seen in price of persia the new one for the 360, although with that the drawings are more realistic but with a strong ink outline, the drawings in Okami are much more imaginative and very highly stylized.

I was also inspired just by cartoons in general because I watch alot of them.

(Don't believe this but just tried to add the pictures which were in my "home folder" as am at college and my home folder has vanished!  I can't get into it at all i am just greeted with this message: the volume for kb76096 cannot be found.) what the hell is going on now? I have work in there!

Finally finished! evaluation

I came in this morning still close to tears everytime I had to tell someone what happened to my work!

I have spent the whole day with an old file getting it back up to scratch, I actually thought it would take me 3 days again, but have done it in a day, the only issue i had was with the text, i must have wasted hours trying different things out, as in my lost copy i had the text fading in and out etc but on this one it wasn't having it, the speech bubbles were fading out but then the text would just remain on the screen! I converted the text to graphics, movie clips, it still would not work, i tried having them on seperate layers then on the same, and still nothing.

In the end I just put a blank keyframe after the fade out, so the text disappears, so what you get is a nice fade with the speech bubbles and boxes, but the text remains then abruptly vanishes, it is not too noticeable, maybe casual viewers wouldn't notice, but I did want this work to be at the best that i could get it as I consider it a portfolio piece.

Now at the stage of publishing the document, I got stuck with a button, it had text on it and it wasn't allowing you to click anywhere where the text was, after consulting another student found out that it was because the text was set at "dynamic text" and it should have been on "static text" after changing this i found it worked perfect!

I just wish i'd realized it was that earlier! I did think about doing it again, but it would mean about another half hours messing around and I have had enough! I don't think it is bad enough to be a problem as it's just a minor, it's not even something alot of people will notice, it will just annoy me!

there are other issues, for example the first button has a pen mark at the side of it, but as i don't know what stage it was put there it would be impossible to go back and undo it, and i am not about to create the whole button again, as it was time-consuming, contains movie clips etc.

I cannot delete the pen mark from anywhere so that will just have to stay.

the only other issue I have, (besides the mushroom kingdom scene with the jumping mushrooms and the graveyard scene with the sound and back button mentioned in earlier posts) is the trees in the first 2 scenes, there is a slight jump as the trees are on seperate layers, and are different sizes in each scene, I had to do this by eye so it was very tedious and that is the best I could get it.

Other than that I am very pleased with the finished outcome! I feel very confident about this project and feel it is one of strongest so far, my last flash project pales in comparison to this one! although that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what I learnt from it, I found it exciting to see my work "move" which has always been my obsession, ever since I first discovered "stop motion" which is rather tedious, with flash however you can tween movements so it's less tedious in that department, but of course it has it problems, if you can remember to back up your work literally every 10 minutes onto various volumes then you have a winner!

I just did not expect my brand new macbook to completely crash and brake down the way it has!

I really had fun with this project despite the frustrations and amount of time it took up, but I know that the next time I do anything like this it will be alot easier, thus alot faster and less frustrating, well flash will always be frustrating but when you are confident with it and know it in and out it makes it easier to deal with any problems, I would like for that to happen one day for me.

I did not stick to the brief with this one in the sense that I did not use a Brothers grimm tale, I did spend a few weeks (or should i say waste?) looking at various brothers grimm tales, I settled on Hansel and Gretal because the 2 other stories I would have liked were taken and I did not want the same story as anybody else, so I was stuck in a rut to be honest, and couldn't even see myself finishing it! I really would have liked to have made up my own story, that way it would have been more fun for me and I could have been a bit more personal with it.

Of course that Is exactly what I did in the end after seeing another student had done that and then getting Anna's permission, (however that other student has since changed his work to follow the brief) therefore I shouldn't lose anything for doing my own story.

The idea came from a dream I had and just other bits and bats that are in my head, for example although it doesn't look like it, my inspiration for the artwork/style came from a game called: "Okami", I love the quick sketchy style, and the bold inked outlines, so I tried to implement that in my own drawings.

From this brief I think I could see myself doing this type of thing for a living, I really like taking my work that one step further from being a static image to something that moves and then to something that is interactive.

I would like to continue with flash based content and make some more mini-games and interactive story's in my own time and this is something that I will definitely be doing more of.

I have completely turned this around from my first idea which was to create a dark and moody tale aimed at tim burton fans- probably 15 upwards, but the final result is colorful and friendly and aimed more at younger children, I did this because I feel I have neglected my own children to some degree to get this project done (and all my work done all the time) so in a way this was something that I could also give back to them. There is of course still one dark scene in there, it just wouldn't be "me" if that wasn't there!

I am happy with my finished piece besides some minor flaws, and would like to get my own website so that I can have it on there as part of an online portfolio, I now feel alot more confident in flash and action-scripting, which I thought impossible when i first experienced it but after getting used to it it's not that bad and i am positive that i will become alot more adept in using it along the way. 

I have definitely learnt alot from this module, both self-taught and taught in class, this has been my favorite module so far because i enjoyed the freedom i had to create my own world as such as that is what i like to do.

I really appreciate the one on one time that I had with Annabeth aswell during this brief, I gained alot of insight from them, even more so than I did in the regular sessions, and feel it would have been extremely difficult to finish without that.

drag and drop script

queen.onPress = function() {

this.startDrag(true);

updateAfterEvent();

};

queen.onRelease = function() {

this.stopDrag();

if (this.hitTest(greens)) {

gotoAndPlay("greens over", "greenstart");

}

if (this.hitTest(reds)) {

gotoAndPlay("reds over", "redstart");

}

if (this.hitTest(talls)) {

gotoAndPlay("talls over", "tallstart");

}

if (this.hitTest(pinks)) {

gotoAndPlay("pinks over", "pinkstart");

}

  

if (this.hitTest(shrooms)) {

gotoAndPlay("shrooms over", "shroomstart");

}

};

Action-scripting Interactive brief

so now i have found this one: 

queen.onPress = function(){

startDrag(this,true)

} 

queen.onRelease = function(){

this.stopDrag();

}

which seems to work so far but when i click on the queen without dragging her she will continue to move down slighty each time i click! so if i were to just click on and off of the movie clip of the queen it will eventually move to the bottom of the screen without even being dragged!

little bit jarring....

now how do i do the next bit? i want a different outcome depending on where she is dropped but i'm not sure what to do at all? 

just found out that why my clip may be moving like that, in one of the scripts i tried the word false was in there which means the mouse position will be locked where it was when the clip was first clicked on, and true which was on anna's script always locks the mouse pointer in a central position.

i prefer the false method but i don't know where to put it in my script! ?

oh how silly of me! it has true right there in the script!  I have just changed this to false and the movement is much better.

found another piece of code to make it smoother, the update after event code, which i am sure was on one of the codes i tried already? but why didn't any of them work? 

I found something about using components which looks good, you can drag an item onto another and a message appears at the bottom of the screen, what is says will depend on where you put it, but I can't seem to find components on flash? i found the component inspector but it just says select a component instance to edit its parameters, bindings or schema in this panel.

erm what the hell is all that?

and what's the difference between creating the drag drop on the frame or on the instance?

} 

Drag and drop

Well I found a website (http://www.entheosweb.com/Flash/default.asp) that had a tutorial on how to use drag and drop, the code I got from there was: 

on (press) {

startDrag (this,false) ;

}

on (release) {

stopDrag ();

}

which is totally different to the code I have for my cat test and the one on annamorphic.co.uk with the keys and the locks?

yet this one works! but all it does it allow you to drag and drop the queen movie clip, nothing happens when she placed in a paticular spot as with the fish and the cat, so what I need to know now is, do i need an entirely different script for that? or can I add to this one? 

fingers crossed that i find out before monday! I will be on here searching till then, no sleep!

The Treesprite and the Mushroom queen storyboards

they are the wrong way around so the bottom one is the first! the top is just some buttons designs.

Well and truly F****d!

Well this is the last scene in my flash interactive story/game and I can't do it! I must have missed the lesson on the keys to the lock because it does not look familiar, I have looked it up on the website: annamorphic.co.uk, however none of it makes sense to me and I don't know what to do,  I cannot download any of the files as clicking on the download link leads to a screen full of jumbled text? 

I want to be able to drag the mushroom queen to to various different groups of mushroom, (as you can see in the picture) when the wrong group is targeted you will be greeted with a "try again" message until the correct batch of mushrooms is hit and then you get your ending- game over- you win scene!

But I can't do it! 

I have a tutorial file in which I made a cat and a fish, the fish could be dragged around the screen and when it was released over the cat the cat would meow and text appeared, I have tried to copy this code into the above mushroom scene, however nothing happens? I changed the instance names of course but still nothing! 

what am I going to do? 

here is the code i tried to use: 

queen_mc.onPress = Function() {

startDrag(this);

}

queen_mc.onRelease = Function()

{

stopDrag();

}

this is the code off the website:  (is it because one of these } isn't at the start of the script?)

key.onPress = function() {
this.startDrag(true);
updateAfterEvent();
};

key.onRelease = function() {
this.stopDrag();
if (this.hitTest(lock)) {
gotoAndStop("room1");

Meet The Mushroom Queen!

Newer flash designs

Here are some newer re-vamped designs! however they have been converted to raster graphics to be displayed so still have a rough edge, the original vector images are neat and clear.

Woodsprite or Treesprite Old design

Old photoshop design for my Treesprite, it has since been neatened up on Flash as I prefer to draw on flash than Illustrator. these are awful! I'm so glad I re-drew them! thank god working with symbols and movie clips is so simple on Flash! because you only have to edit the symbol and it will change everywhere on the timeline! so no messing about altering every single keyframe you have the graphic in!

CATAPILLARS FOR MY FLASH INTERACTIVE TALE

Update for 500 word animation summary

AT LAAAST!!!

My animation is finished! I managed to get into college today and got some help in getting it tweaked here and there, I got my issues fixed and now it's done! I totally re-did the scene with the girl in it cause it just didn't fit in, but I decided to make her slide into the initial background instead of just jumping into another background that didn't match.

So i'll leave off here cause I have to get on with my powerpoint presentation now!

and here is the uploaded final video, (let's hope it uploads quicker at college!)

500 word summery for Flash animation brief

For this brief we were given a choice of 3 companies to create a flash based animation for, that could be put onto a promotional website.

 of the 3 choices I chose Pylones gift shop because I wanted to do something different and figured half the class would pick marvel! besides I'm not particularly interested in marvel.

Anyway I started this project by brainstorming a few ideas in my sketchbook and then creating a storyboard for the idea I wanted to stick with. 

This was to vectorize the "gifts" using illustrator and then bringing those images into flash I planned on having them dance around the screen after bursting from a gift box, I decided to use Christmas as a theme and have the gifts coming from a present in someones living room, dancing around the room and also adding color as they went, I was going to follow this up with a slogan along the lines of pylones adding color at christmas.

To get the color element in there I used 2 backgrounds which I edited in photoshop, a black and white and a colored version of the same background and then altering the alpha faded the black and white background where necessary so that the colored background could shine through as the gifts danced around.

To get them to dance I decided to use guidelines and motion tweens, due to time constrictions I kept the items static, it would have been nice to have some of them moving individually as well but given the time and the sheer amount of hassle and frustration I went through with using flash decided it was not possible to do.

At the end of the film I planned on having another scene depicting a person arriving from the hallway, at this point the gifts were to dive back into the box, undiscovered... however due to the time limitations and technical ability I had to leave this out and instead just brought the girl into the current scene.

I would say the influence behind my work on this brief has definitely been a range of Anime movies that I have seen over the last few years or so, If I had to name one it would be paprika, or more specifically the marching scene in paprika, which encompasses a marching army of inanimate objects, I also took the music from the Intro of this film for my animation, however I could only get a small clip for free, so I had the choice of looping it or cutting it and adding more music, which is what I did, at the end of the scene a girl comes in and the music changes.

I feel I have tried my best on this brief, although am not 100% happy with the outcome, this is because I only have basic knowledge in flash, (a few introductory sessions) and found I didn't always get the help I needed when I needed it. 

of course there was only one tutor available for the duration of this brief who had to tend to the whole class alone, so it's understandable that I couldn't get all the tutorage I needed.

I found alot of problems and frustration with using flash, however after these things were explained to me and I knew how to resolve them I can now say I feel fairly confident in using flash, although clearly at a basic level, I feel there is still more that I need to learn and am sure I will with further briefs.

I feel I have done well given the circumstances and have definitely got a basic understanding of flash, there are still things I want to know and am sure in time I will find out! 

overall I am happy with the first half of my animation, but the 2nd part needs improvement.

(note: since writing this I have improved the second half and am alot happier with it!)

one other thing was that I was nervous about using thousands of frames, (I have learning problems with math and anything to do with numbers makes me freeze up basically) so as I'm not experienced in flash and to avoid confusion I kept them shorter thinking I could add frames and expand it later, of course I then found out that If i do this it will severely slow down the entire sequence, so I had to leave it as it was, otherwise delete it and start again! and I don't think I can do 3-4 weeks work again in a couple of days so it will have to be left as it is, which is around 825 frames, making the animation about 33 seconds long.

If I could do this brief again I would spend less time on vectorizing the images, I would have made an animatic, (and I really hope I don't lose marks for that because we were told we could do an animatic or a storyboard and it was not made clear that marks would be lost for not doing an animatic?) as this may have helped with realization, after the presentation of the storyboards I decided to just get on with my Flash as I knew what I wanted to happen, however it did not work that way! I would also plan my time alot better as you don't realize how precious it is until it's gone! Although I did dedicate almost all my time to this project for the past 2 weeks, I haven't worked on anything else because of it, I haven't even given my family the time of day because of it! so It's not an issue of not putting enough time into it, it's probably more about managing that time, which i'm sure if i had been confident in flash would have been easier!

here is the finished quicktime file, hopefully it will upload in college as I tried at home and it wouldn't upload!

(can't believe it, it's been an hour now and it STILL hasn't uploaded!)

(got it to upload at last but the quality is very very bad!!)

Vectorized Images for my Flash Animation

I don't know why but some of them have changed color as they have been uploaded to here! and the outlines have gone grey on others. These are just what I have managed to get done so far, I am getting on with the animation now and hope to find the time to add some more later so that there is more variety!