Tinkering with Flash

[bicostp]

I've been using Newgrounds for quite some time now, and I finally decided to buckle down and make a Flash movie to submit! (I think I signed up last May or something). Unfortuantely for that site, the majority of the videos that are submitted are like this one, or are really crappy like it:

http://img335.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... var4zw.swf

(^ it took longer to post this than it did to make it. It was goof frame by frame experimenting at the end with the text)

Here's what a couple days of tinkering has produced. I don't know ActionScript very well, but I'm comfortable with the drawing tools)

http://img373.imageshack.us/my.php?image=test0co.swf
^A scene I hope to include in the video I want to submit, but just the background and lighting, not Batman and the button. Yes, that is the Batman from The Ultimate Showdown. I tried using a combination of gradients and alpha channels (transparency) to achieve a "stage light" effect. You can see it as Batman flies up the screen, as he turns slightly yellow as he ascends. (there's a bit of a lighting glow at the top, too) Eventually this scene will have a microphone and a guy sitting on the stool with an acoustic guitar. I might have to make the stool taller...

http://img491.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... yle2tn.swf
^ Not really an animation. I just used it to compress an MP3 I made of the SMB 1 overworld music with Windows noises as the instruments.

http://img431.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ess0fx.swf
^ Just some "hawt pr4wn". Note the distinct difference between "pr4wn" and "pr0n". Pr4wn are small shellfish, pr0n is... you know. Mainly a test of some ActionScript fire and bitmap tracing.

You're probably wondering what I plan on making. Well, I'm pretty sure I want to do a music video based off the song "american pie". I never understood it, but I read a couple pages on textfiles.com about it and it finally makes sense! It's about the decade after the death of Buddy Holly and how rock music changed dramatically. <a href="http://www.textfiles.com/music/amer_pie.txt">Here's the article if you want to read it.</a> I plan on having an optional "pop-up video" kind of track which would bring up boxes with explination text in them as those parts of the song went by. The drawing style will probably wind up looking a lot like Decline 2, since I'm using a lot of their tutorial info, and it seems to work well to have each part of the character a moveable part. (I don't have the patience to use frame-by--frame extensively, so tweening will be used. a LOT. )

I guess the bottom line is, does anybody know Flash at all here? I could use a bit of help with ActionScript.

Any comments on the demos I posted are welcome, too.

[*o*]

wow great work! your way ahead of me...(then again i dont understand motion tweening yet)...

could anyone suggest a good tutorial on motion tween and shape tweening?

[bicostp]

I've found the tutorial collection on Newgrounds to be helpful.

http://newgrounds.com/flash/index.html

http://www.freeflashtutorials.com/ has a couple hours' worth of free Quicktime-format tutorial videos. It covers the basics pretty well.

http://sfb.johnrichie.com/tutorials.php

^tutorials by the Super Flash Bros, who made both the Decline and Another Day series.

[totokan]

evar since I lost the install file, I gave up on flash. nice work, though.

[*o*]

THANKS BIC!!

now i can tween!

[Skyone]

Ah Flash. Keep it up.

[dj-spuddy]

What versions of flash do you have? I have 8 and find that it has a lot more cool features like advanced alpha transparency. I've been on newgrounds for a while to but i would not dream of submitting yet, i want to be on there for atleast a year to build up m skills.

[bicostp]

I use Flash MX (Flash 6)

Just messing around with lip sync...
http://img117.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nogood9vi.swf

(sound clip from Pinky and the Brain. Funny show.)

[sniper_spike]

That looks pretty good, but the lip movement is a bit fast; if you made your own mouths you could tween it better.

[Radon199]

Ya, it is a little fast for normal speaking, almost half the speed would be good. As said above, if you have a webcam take some videos of just your mouth doing the saying.

When commercial animators like the people at Pixar make a movie they always film themselves doing the actions. In fact by the time the movie is finished they have so many diffrent video clips of the animators doing the actions they could splice it all together and get the same movie.

[Extreme_Jesus]

Good for you!

i should really get back into flash...

I spent a good year tinkering and making little things but nothing major but i eventually gave up becuase of two main reasons

1)My attention span i start one thing and then halfway through i come up with an even better idea and start another, and again half way through id come up with a even better idea and so on

2) this is probably the most important one, i cant draw too well


As for the actionscript there's a lot of tutorials out there for it, not just on newgrounds

I never really got completly to grips with it, i could do basic things but nothing to fancy


Also @*o* Shape tweening is the devil

[Kurt_]

Here's my (very boring) second attempt at a flash game.
I suggest playing it with NO volume!

http://confessions.275mb.com/dennis.swf

It won't work as a url since it doesn't have www in it. *

(And you sorta have to adjust the screen a bit. The grey thing at the side skips the levels, and the background images loop, so it need to be adjusted accordingly. If you get the title page adjusted, it should be alright.)

mod note: *yes it will. Just put http:// at the beginning! -bic