ArtWorker opened this issue on Apr 01, 2003 ยท 4 posts
ArtWorker posted Tue, 01 April 2003 at 6:51 AM
Allow me to direct your attention to the Far Sector site. The banner-sized Flash ani on top of the page represents a satisfying artistic collaboration between myself and Surfpig, aka Duncan Reid. This little project grew out of an idea I floated here a few weeks ago. I'm delighted with the way it has turned out. Basically Duncan animated the little Poser guy to my specs. I supplied most of the elements of the sound track and background art in a Flash file or two. The background was originally created in Photoshop, but to cut down the bytes I re-created most of it in Flash using the gradient tool. One or two elements were imported as transparent GIFs from Photoshop. I created the little green guy in Poser and sent the character file to Duncan, who then animated the tip-toe. Originally I had thought the little guy would run on, but Duncan suggested the tip-toe, which I think works better.
Again, please do go take a look and let us know what you think. I intend on doing more such animated files for Far Sector, perhaps using other people here as resources.
Thanks!
Willowjune posted Wed, 02 April 2003 at 1:41 PM
Very clever and cute!
bluetone posted Wed, 02 April 2003 at 2:38 PM
Nice: simple yet clever. I like it. I also like that you kept it to a minimum since SOOOO many people fill peoples bandwidth with extra junk. This loaded quick, and played flawlessly. Good job! :>
ArtWorker posted Wed, 02 April 2003 at 3:54 PM
Thanks. I've been doing computer graphics/animation for almost 20 years now, mostly for online. I did a twice-weekly animated feature for Prodigy back in the day, for example, though I started off doing educational software. So all along I've had to be very conscious of byte-count and/or download time. It is never wise to piss off the audience! The challenge will be to do these little anies of a regular basis. They need to tell some sort of story in a very brief time. I'm not a whiz-bang animator, but I love it and I think I know a little about how this stuff is supposed to work. I didn't spend all those hours watching Chuck Jones for nothing!
Thanks again, on behalf of Duncan, for the kind words.