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");

}

};

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!

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");

Mushroom Panic!

Ah what a cheesy title! this is my mushroom scene in which the player finds themselves in mushroom land where you are greeted by a group of mushrooms! as the mushrooms are static images on the background it took alot of thought and effort (and help from Anna) to get this to work. basically, I made speech bubbles as buttons, in the up state they are not there, but once you rollover a mushroom (the hit area) the bubble will appear, and if you click down more text will appear, then the middle mushroom will give you a choice of helping them or not, you then get to choose yes or no.

I'm not saying what happens if you choose though, you'll have to play it to find out!

However after testing this scene on a number of people I have discovered from feedback that there needs to be some direction as to which mushroom you should click on first, for example if you were to click on the middle one first, you would be greeted with the question: "will you help us?" and you would be taken to a duplicate scene which then offers you a choice.

but if you had not clicked on the other mushrooms first you would not know where you were or why and what they wanted your help for!

so some direction prompting is needed, especially if children are playing it, so that the story flows better.

I was thinking of having a mushroom jumping up and down to entice you to click on that one first, and then then when you have released the mouse another will jump and so on so that they are pressed in the right order, however I don't know how I am going to do this unless i create the whole thing again from scratch as the mushrooms are part of the background.

then how would I do this? make them into jumping movie clips? but then how would i make them stop jumping in order for another to start? how would I tell flash to make the 2nd one jump after the first has stopped? I can't really get my head around it at the moment but I'd really like to do that.

another thought which although won't be as effective could also work is to have say a little fairy, fly in and hover above the mushroom I want the player to press for a number of seconds and then move to the next and so on, this could be done using tweens and timing, so could work but would not be as accurate as the other method.

And here is the present!

The Pylones Present that comes to life! 

backgrounds for my flash animation

Here are the backgrounds I have made in photoshop for my flash animation, it starts with a black and white background that gradually becomes more and more colorful as the animation goes on.

Pylones Gifts Story Boards

Here are some story boards for the flash animation I am going to be making, (god help me I still can't use flash) for Pylones gifts. I thought of a Russian Doll effect, Dancing around the screen, Items being grouped into "gangs" and then competing to be the best, eating each other, diving into a basket and then the idea of them being a christmas present that explodes and adds color to the scene before hiding in the present again before being spotted by a human.

The slogan would be something along the lines of: "Pylones- Bringing Christmas to life" as I chose to look at this more from an advertising point of view.

(this is ridiculous, I have been uploading 3 small images for 20 minutes now, and this happened last time I tried to upload, it's an absolute joke, how I am supposed to keep up with my blog if I can't even upload? arrrrrrghhhhhh!!!!!curses curses curses!!!) (this is pathetic, i thought macs were better than pc's? I had this Bull**** with my pc, now the mac too!? it's been nearly half an hour now and i want to smash everything in my sight!) ah F*** this, I can't upload my F****** images, I give up! what a F***** waste of valuable time! I could have done loads of stuff instead of wasting my time on this piece of S***. I bet if i go out and leave this on like this they still won't have flippin up-loaded! I spent over a grand on this macbook WTF!!! arggggghhhh!!!!

OMG they just appeared! about F***** time!

F-L-A-S-H!

For the past 2 weeks we have been looking at flash animation, although i must admit i am still completely in the dark about it, I have cs4 at home wheras we are using cs3 at school which doesn't help as the overall layout/look is quite different. I think i shall revert back to cs3 until i get the hang of it! 

So i feel very behind the rest of the group, as I still haven't come to grips with the software. If only we were given handouts to accompany the session, then i wouldn't need to spend so much time trying to take notes! I could do the work and forget about the notes! this is how it was done last year, (or the year before?) when we were inducted into photoshop- we were all given detailed step by step handouts that covered everything we were doing in that session!

Oh well, I wish i'd applied to be student rep now cause these are the sort of things i would be asking for cause I feel it would benefit the whole group, and it makes sense to have notes as reference, I hate being the only one taking notes also cause it makes me feel as though I am the thickest one who can't process data in my head so has to take notes! 

anyway i just wanted to post some animations I have been looking at which were doing primarily using flash.

this first one is a students first attempt at flash, I think it's prety cool! 

In this one below, which is another student animation, I like the way 

he/she has used transparency in the opening shot of the bushes parting 

and in the end where you see the gunslinger fade.

This last one here is from an animated show called "Broken Saints" which started

out as an internet series about the inter-twining and revolving lives of 4 people,

the series became so popular that the creators were given backing to have the entire

show recreated on dvd, they stuck to using flash but have tweaked the show here

and there.

The show has now won the sundance film festival award and is over 5 hours long.