At 3/19/08 09:55 PM, MrGlad wrote: How thee how everyone! Wromble just offered me the part 5 on a silver plate so I guess there's nothing much I could do but take it! Im already done with my part, if you think something is missing well just say it! I take the critics very kindly I don't bite!

hey, not bad, man. I guess the most immediate crits I can think of are that the colors of of the bed (the wood and the bed sheets) don't seem to match with the rest of the colors, so it's kind of jarring. I'm not saying that it should be neon colors, but maybe something a bit brighter to match. also, during the part that switches between background gradients, the first time I saw it, I thought that you had just forgotten to color in her dress. then on second viewing, I realized you did it intentionally. this is largely a style choice, so feel free to ignore this, but maybe you could try emphasizing the style a bit more. I'm not sure how, though. maybe use some semi-transparent fills to make shadows on the dress, or put some patterns within the dress area that is different from the background? just some ideas, nothing too major. overall, it's an interesting take on the lyrics that I probably wouldn't have thought of.

and in other news, I've been feeling pretty terrible that it's taking so long for me to finish my part. I think I'm going to have to scale back on the animation I was planning on doing, by using some more "limited animation" techniques, but hopefully such that it still looks good. also, I kept changing my idea as I was going, but I think I'll just settle on what I have and run with it. we'll see what happens.

I've talked to womble already, but just letting the rest of you guys know, I'm still here

At 1/11/08 11:20 AM, mr-womble wrote: bump... any updates from anyone?

... or just hearing for anyone...

sorry for just disappearing suddenly--been on vacation for a while. I'm still not sure when I'll be finishing my part, but just letting all of you know that I'm still alive and haven't given up on the collab.

frame-by-frame animation is a concept that has existed for over a century now, so there's a lot of written material and theory out there that covers it. like anything else, it takes practice, dedication, and a lot of trial-and-error. my suggestion if you are really lost would be to read some books or tutorials about animation in general, or study animated movies that you like by going through them one frame at a time during key sequences. good luck!

At 12/18/07 05:29 PM, SpaceWalk wrote: sent

wow, that was fast turnaround time. definitely making me look bad, haha. nice part, by the way. fits the mood. my only crit other than what's been mentioned already might be to change some of the colors in the background so they go together a bit better, but I guess it goes by too fast to notice, like you said.

At 12/16/07 09:05 AM, mr-womble wrote: ive tryed drawing my background... but its hard to fit it with tings happening at different depths and places round the screen, and with no particular setting i find it hard to think of wat to do... any suggestions?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. if you still need help, could you explain a bit more what you're having difficulty with?

well, one way to improve is to look at examples of good menus. this movie has a menu that I've always remembered as being among the coolest I've seen in a Flash movie. now obviously you don't need to get that elaborate to make something that looks good, but it's just an example. you could take inspiration from game menu designs that you think look good--whether they be Flash games, or professional console and/or PC games.

also, if you are having trouble coming up with color choices that work well together (i.e. don't make the eyes bleed), this is a great website/tool for doing exactly that.

hope that helped. good luck!

wow, that's really cool! even with your roughed-out animations, this looks great. the backgrounds are nice, the pacing is fairly good (but you said you are going to be adding scenes, so I'm sure it will be better once that happens), and the music works amazingly well for the mood of the piece. in what language is that one song when he "wakes up"? it was quite cool when that song kicked in.

what really caught my eye with this one, though, is that by some crazy coincidence, an animation that I've been working on also includes a dream-like sequence on a train. so it is sort of bizarre and interesting to see another artist's take on that sort of situation. anyway, don't worry, it's not like it's exactly the same or anything. just a weird coincidence of basic premise that I thought was worth mentioning.

so yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how this animation turns out and how the story ends. keep up it up, and good luck.

so...how are things going with you guys?

and for AS3 you would use, for example:

stage.quality = "low"

in AS2 you would instead use:

_quality = "LOW"

as Masterswordsman mentioned above. works the same for medium, high, etc.

I first started learning Flash on a very old version (maybe version 4?) that couldn't use mp3s, only wavs. but more modern versions of Flash (at least the last six years or so) definitely can use mp3 files. how are you actually trying to import them?

At 12/13/07 09:25 PM, webcrawler559 wrote: ...I presume it stops my background ... repeating on computers with higher resolutions...

actually if you want it to not repeat you should use:

background-repeat: no-repeat;

"repeat-x" makes it tile only in the horizontal direction. the default is horizontal and vertical tiling.

heh, this is actually something I was looking into just a few weeks ago. apparently there is a way to communicate between separate Flash movies that are embedded in HTML pages. I haven't tried it out for myself, yet, but these sites might help:

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Com munication-between-Flash-Movies/7498

http://www.webwasp.co.uk/tutorials/b21-c ommunication/index.php

http://www.actionscript.org/resources/ar ticles/219/1/Communication-between-two-m ovies/Page1.html

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewCont ent.do?externalId=tn_15692&sliceId=2

another alternative might be to have your "macro" Flash movie send a variable to a database using PHP, and have the other Flash movie periodically read from the database to check for updates. but that probably won't work quite as well.

well, for something like this, I would say that text talking would be better than bad voice acting. but very good voice acting would be better than text. just my opinion.

wow, this thread took a weird turn. but yeah, don't take offense that people are asking for pics and stuff. it's just that generally when people "reveal" a series, there's some media attached to it so people can see at a glance how much effort has been put into it. usually only very well-known artists will reveal only the basic premise and nothing else, because that's all they need to cause a stir.

there are tons of threads on here where someone describes a story and nothing comes out of it, so I think people that visit these threads are a little more inclined to ask for proof. so just for future reference, maybe after waiting until closer to the release date, you can post another thread with some pics, if you want to.

but anyway, I think everyone here is trying to be supportive as it seems like you yourself are excited about your series, and that's always good to see that people are motivated to make a quality Flash movie.

so anyway, assuming the problems with your computer get fixed sometime soon, how long do you think it will be before you complete the first episode? also, is the website going to somehow tie into the "world" of the series itself? I think you hinted at something like that.

anyway, best of luck with the series. I'm sure your hard work will pay off.

one of the interesting things Madness did when it became popular is that it showed that it is possible to make a fairly interesting and fun to watch Flash movie with mostly tweens and deceptively simple graphics. it made a lot of people that were intimidated by Flash feel for the first time that making good animation was within their reach.

now, I think anything that encourages people to learn a new constructive skill is a good thing. so if people see Madness and use that as inspiration to start learning Flash, then that's cool. but hopefully after they learn a bit, they will also realize that there is a fair amount of work that goes into making a watchable Madness movie. and also that it doesn't hurt to come up with original concepts, too, every once in a while.

At 11/27/07 04:49 PM, doomshock wrote: here's what i've got so far...any comments? http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/3807/604 93_15_dont_ask.php

interesting, you have a lot of stuff going on there--not just different characters, but also different styles. as Zorg-o said, maybe a background would be in order, but keep it simple, so as not to distract the viewer too much from what is already a fair amount of onscreen action. also, I noticed that there was a reflection under the little guitar-playing guy. I'd almost say, why not give everyone in there a reflection? might help tie things together a little. but I don't know, that's a style choice, and it's your call.

At 11/22/07 07:30 AM, Chad-T wrote: You're dumb RonaldRaven.

I'd say the way you phrased your original problem was unclear. but what can I say? you couldn't get Flash 8 to work right and you're making fun of random people on the internet that try to help you, so you must be a genius.

At 11/22/07 03:45 AM, LostVoices wrote: ive made a house LOL

nice

At 11/22/07 04:04 AM, Chad-T wrote: ... it goes from 500k to 800k in memory

first off, what do you mean by this? like the .FLA file is 500,000 Kb, or is this how much RAM it's using? if it is RAM, and you are talking about 800,000 Kb of RAM for running Flash 8, then yeah that seems like a lot, but I would imagine not totally unheard of. but anyway, I just opened up flash right now to see, and it is running at around 92,000 Kb on my machine.

so I don't know, what else is going on in your movie? how many layers, effects, etc. are you using? can't really think of anything right away that would be causing the problem other than just having a lot of stuff in the file. good luck, though.

I'm no expert, but maybe a good way to start might be to informally think of a list of all of the annoyingly overplayed RPG clichés, and then actively say, "ok, I'm not going to do any of this." another thing that might help would be to think of what you want players to get out of the story. is it going to be something really thought-provoking that makes people question accepted norms? or is it just more of a vehicle to get players from point A to point B with at least some motivation? some of the best games in my opinion are the ones that at least try to do the former. and sometimes they fail in a big way. but with so many mindless games out right now, the ones that at least make an attempt to make the player think, whether it's through complex problem solving or a powerful story arc, are the better games.

but it seems you already kind of know that intuitively, based on what you said. so just think of things that are meaningful to you. what are the things that you like to see in games? what are the world events that most concern you? what are the "big questions" and ideas that you daydream about? how can a decision or plot point in a game challenge someone to think about something in a new way? think about these questions and see if you can find some way to work them into a story.

now this is only one of many possible ways of approaching a story--from the top down. another possibility would be to work from the ground up by coming up with interesting characters with unique personalities. then you put those characters in difficult situations, and if your character profiles are strong enough, the story should come naturally.

anyway, not sure if that was helpful in any way, but I typed what came to mind. hopefully at least it gives you some ideas for what to do next. good luck.

At 11/21/07 01:41 PM, cyberpotato wrote: were can i find this v-cam

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascri pt/2004/08/17/flashhacks.html?page=2

or just just google it. I think there might be a newer version of it somewhere.

if you've seen all the tutorials and techniques, then the real way to get better is to apply what you learned and practice...a lot. buy a small sketchbook and carry it around with you, or at least promise yourself that you will fill up one page with doodles every day. as you draw, think about specific things you learned in tutorials, or about drawing styles you like, or even try to draw people and things you see in real life, if you are so inclined. try to loosen up and get a feel for the flow of the pencil--concentrate on the basics, first. and just have fun drawing. unless something crazy happens, when you finally fill up every page, you should notice marked improvement between the first and last pages of that sketchbook.

At 11/21/07 12:20 AM, RebeliousShadow wrote: ...so there isnt a technical tool for me..just practice( or a wacom tablet..but im still saving :) ) lol, thanks anyway tho

yeah, a tablet helps a lot. but there are a lot of people that manage to do some fluid fbf animation with the mouse (for example, Vinnie Veritas). anyway, you're actually not doing too bad for just starting out, so don't get discouraged. keep practicing, man!

umm, do you know about onion skinning? the little buttons under the timeline--click them and you can see multiple frames at once, kind of like with an animator's light table, or tracing paper. if you're not using that, you should try it. sorry I didn't mention it earlier. that's the first place you start when you're doing FBF. the guidelines and such are just if you need some extra help getting proportions right. now if you are looking directly at the previous frames using the onion skin feature and still can't draw them right, I'm not sure if I can help. it just takes practice.

select your text and hit ctrl+b. this is the "break apart" function (in the menu: modify > break apart). you may need to do this twice, as some versions of Flash break apart to individual letters first. after it is broken apart, the text is treated the same way as graphics you make with the brush tool. you can select the whole thing and apply a gradient, erase parts of it, draw on it, or whatever you want. the downside--you can't edit it as text anymore. so make sure the text is right before you break it apart. peace.

you could try just animating the up-down motion of the body with tweens. but if you did want to actually animate the whole body, a good trick is to put a rough shape of the body on another layer in the timeline (even just a simple rectangle would work), and as you animate frame-by-frame, make sure it is still proportional to your guide shape. and then just delete the guide shape when you're done.

hey guys, is this collab still going?

At 11/18/07 10:54 AM, mr-womble wrote: ive changed the sound settings.... http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/2907/571 18_newest_people_singing.php i cant really tell any difference, but you guys might be able to.

yeah, a slight difference. the clicking sounds have less "pop" to them. but like you said, it's not going to affect how it is in the final animation, so it's no big deal. partly I was just wondering if it was a problem with only my speakers, as I've been having some issues with them lately.

At 11/15/07 03:00 PM, mr-womble wrote: wat do u think?

nice work there! good lip-syncing. I personally would like to see what it looks like with a background, so good on you for trying it out. one thing though, maybe it's just my speakers, but did anyone else notice a weird "clicking" sound in the audio?

At 11/8/07 09:06 PM, Zorg-o wrote: speaking of updates!

http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/081107/7 5693_Okgo_22.php

i just finished my first part, i've been such a lazy old bastard at this collab and i apologize, I'm gonna finish my next part and then the other with theo here.

nice parts! that's a fun little character you have there, and the animation is smooth. also, it appears we have another person that loves the color green. I wonder what color the part that both of you are sharing will be...