Flash on the Beach Conference

Our very own Flash conference in Brighton!!

Flash on the Beach

How exciting!

Advice for anyone trying to break into a market

Invest in your ideas. If you have a good idea you think people will understand, make it happen.

There's nothing that rivals a unique idea that's well realised. The case in point is my Flash game Prism.

I've had these ideas for nearly 5 years, and wished for the day when I could be paid to make them come to life. After 3 years training myself in Flash development, I got a kick up the backside to just make it happen myself. Since the demo went online at the end of April, I've found myself meeting people I've been dying to meet, working with companies I've been dying to work for, and generally having my career dreams come true.

I waited and waited for the right people to work with to make these ideas real, but in the end it just came down to me believing in the ideas without hesitation, and refusing to give in to distractions.

Commit to your ideas, and don't look back!

Remix and Repent - depthCORE Pack Release

The latest pack release is mindblowing, check it out:

Remix and Repent

I'm determined to get work included in a future pack...

Abstract Art in Development and Design

Sometimes the most abstract of ideas can be beautiful, but when you're developing code there's no one to appreciate it but yourself. Take for example the project I'm working on at the moment; it's a collection of edutainment modules, collected together in a virtual world. I spent a full week coding the framework without seeing any graphics or text on the screen at all. That's pretty hardcore for flash development. The system manages audio, graphics, animations and user progress through the world etc.

At the point before I started incorporating the graphics, when it was just a skeleton, it was beautiful, because of its abstract complexity.

I am designing a system like this that has a direct sonic output which describes the system that creates it; improving the odds of other people appreciating it.

If you're interested in the inspiration: < these are the abstract artists I am watching, and < these are the artists I am listening to. Their work captures the fascinating complexity of modern technology - but abstracted to the essences.

Many timeless pieces of art have sought to capture the essence of beautiful things, and so that is what I aim to do!

Flex is ace!

After a lively presentation by Aral Balkan at last night's FlashCodersBrighton, I'm genuinely excited about application development.

The power and flexibility that flex affords is pretty F awesome. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in building functional swfs, as the speed of development laughs in the face of Flash.

Having seen what Flex is capable of, I'm really eager to see what changes we'll see in Flash 9 given the power of AS 3.0.

You can read more about Flex and AS 3.0, and download the respective technologies at the Adobe Labs website.

Sickening Skills

It's one thing to have ultra skills in one field, but when someone of world-class calibre decides to turn his hand at something else, with equal success and talent, it gets a bit... confusing?

I've been a fan of Eric Jordan since first laying my eyes on his 2advanced sites a few years ago; like many other flash designers on the planet, he inspired me to pick up flash and push it as far as possible.

Having recently been floored again by his company's latest showcase site; 2Advanced v5, I've just discovered his talents at producing and mixing electronic music.

DJing Progressive House isn't the most challenging of musical practices, but the level of skill required to produce top quality records most definitely is - so when Mr. Jordan knocks out mixes and tracks to the standard found on his audio blog Neverrain as well as running the most notorious design studio in the world, one begins to wonder what the hell is going on!!

Is there a 5th dimension of productivity I don't know about?

XML in SuperCollider

I've been designing a unique sequencing system with SC for about two years now (very slow progress), and now that I've got actual sonic results I'm happy with, I'm refining the system to make it feasible to play live.

For this I've needed some complex Object interaction, and a way to predefine the state of those objects with some kind of data file. I'm not certain that SC supports MySQL yet, and it also doesn't have built in XML support, but this ace XML package does the trick in one swoop. Very much like using an XML object in Flash/JavaScript:


DOMDocument Classes for SuperCollider


I'll be posting fruits of my experiments here in the near futur.

Flash interface animations...

...have to be almost over before the user knows what's happening.

As soon as a user understands what's happening with an animation, it has to finish or do something different; otherwise it bores. Seems obvious doesn't it, but so many flash interface designs frustrate users because the animations are sluggish and boring.

Speed them up, or make them more interesting.

First FCB Session

Flash Coders Brighton kicked off last night with a great show of designers and developers from a variety of backgrounds. We chatted about our interests, and a few showed their work. It was pretty clear that we have a lot to teach each other, so there should be no shortage of material to cover in the coming months.

Of particular interest was the upcoming Flashlite 2.0, which will no doubt have a session or two dedicated to it in the near future, mention of Aral Balkan's presentation on Flex during the next session, and I had some interest in my game engine too, so I'll be doing a presentation on the details of that at some point :)

We've also set the FlashcodersNY group a coding challenge: to produce a 16 step sequencer using nothing but ActionScript and four sound samples (no graphics in the IDE). The group who produces the smallest filesize app (most efficient code) wins the challenge!

On the whole the evening was a success, proving FCB a welcome addition to the new media community in Brighton.

Appleseed

There's some of the chunkiest sci-fi action I've ever seen in Appleseed. The story is a bit laboured, which is a shame because the film loses its pace in a few places, but the attention to detail, The World View as the crew call it in the behind the scenes features, is very well realised. Pretty good soundtrack too. Check it out!

Appleseed Trailer