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.
