CLOCKWORKBIRD: design, animation, illustration

Box2D + Glen Beck = Awesomeness

hey hey — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:04:23 +0000

This is a silly little test swf that I created while working on a project for the Intelligent Information Laboratory. It’s not perfect… but it sure is fun.

Go on… Get out some aggression. It might be the healthiest thing you’ve done all day.

1,000 uploads to YouTube, the aftermath

hey hey — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:46:33 +0000

So, a friend of mine, Patrick, has been performing a art/video project on Youtube for the last year. The project can be viewed here.

The project:
1. Upload a video to YouTube.
2. Download said video from YouTube.
3. Reupload the video you just downloaded.
4. Repeat 999 times.

Turns out the natural deterioration of the re-compression is a lovely thing to watch.
By the 1000th time there is very little left of the original image and sound track. What remains, is a pixelated wash that vaguely suggests movement. Art + Technology once again comes unique and super cool.

This was covered over at Mashable. READ THE FULL ARTICLE.

PRF Songwriting Challenge – Week 71 – I Win!

hey hey — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:30:00 +0000

So, it’s 11pm last Sunday. I’m watching a Dr. Who episode I’ve seen before and it suddenly strikes me that the PRF songwriting challenge is due in one hour.

So, I whipped out the ‘ol baritone uke and wrote a simple, little ditty in about 20 minutes, recorded in 2 takes , with 1 mic and ended up tying for first place. Woo hoo! I’m kind of a winner!

The challenge was the write a song that somehow has to do with vegetables. Here is a link to the whole week’s entries:
http://www.purevolume.com/PRFWeek71/albums/Call+Any+Vegetable

Mine is titled: Iamnotavegetable

AS3: gotoAndPlay when an FLV file is finished playing

hey hey — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:10:18 +0000

THE PROBLEM:
So, I recently created a showcase reel that involves several flvs with transitions between. For various reasons, I had to make this a timeline based animation. I was running into a problem with latency because of download times and the flvplayback component. The flvs would play and the transitions between the flvs would occur really late.

THE SOLUTION:
Add an event listener to the flv instance and listen for COMPLETE.

Step 1: Import your FLV files and place on stage with the correct # of frames between them. (Take the length of your FLV file, multiply by the FPS of your FLA file: that is how many keyframes that particular FLV should have on the timeline.)

Select File > Import to Stage > Your FLV file name
(There are lots of options when importing FLV files. Select what is appropriate for your project.)

Step 2: Give your flvs instance names ( for the first FLV, I chose the very creative instance name flv1)

Step 3: Create a new layer, name it labels

Step 4: Set a keyframe on for the first frame of each flv file and give a label name on the properties tab

Step 5: Create an actions layer, create a keyframe for the first frame of each flv file (just like you did for the label names)

Step 6: Import the VideoEvent.
On the first frame of the Actions layer place this code:

import fl.video.VideoEvent;

Step 7: Add this code to each key frame, changing the instance name, function name and gotoAndPlay() label name.

flv1.addEventListener(VideoEvent.COMPLETE,videoOver1);

function videoOver1(e:VideoEvent)
{
gotoAndPlay(“part2″);
}

VIEW THE TUTORIAL : On FLV Complete gotoAndPlay()

5005: Unknown Error optimizing byte code

hey hey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:05:33 +0000

THE PROBLEM:

I encountered a super annoying error message in flash today:
5005: Unknown Error optimizing byte code

I received it when trying to publish a flash file that incorporates several FLV files.

Apparently, Adobe says this error can occur when publishing really large files (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405257), but my FLA is only 1.6 mb and the published SWF is only 345 k. I’m guessing it has to do with the FLVs that are being loaded in.

THE SOLUTION:

Thankfully, I found a concise and easy to use solution here (THANK YOU, Stefig Design! You’re the bestest.):

http://stefig.blogspot.com/2009/04/5005-unknown-error-optimizing-byte-code.html

The Fader Magazine: New Favorite Podcast

hey hey — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:26:41 +0000

I’m a podcast lover, fiend, addict, whatever title you want to slap on. I just can’t get enough. They are an intregal part of my workflow and one of the primary ways I keep up with news, entertainment and business stuff. Long live the podcast.

The Fader magazine podcast is my new favorite addition to the podcast collection.
It features great new artists from a variety of genres. I can already see many more CD purchases in my future.

The Golden Ratio and Web Design

hey hey — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:22:25 +0000

I love Nettuts. They’ve brought us another lovely article here:
http://nettuts.com/tutorials/other/the-golden-ratio-in-web-design/

I remember being fascinated by the concept of the golden ratio as a kid. Good design explained by math?!? What?!?! It suggests a greater organization to this wacky beautiful world we live in.
To me, that’s comforting.

Flash and Andriod

hey hey — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:16:39 +0000

Hurray~! A smart phone that supports flash! Thank you, Android. Again, you are leading the pack.

Personally, I’m thrilled by this. It’s one step closer to being able to extend interactivity to new input devices. Can you imagine playing a game on a touch screen? Or experiencing an interactive art piece with your hands? The possibilities are endless and exciting. One small step, one giant leap.

You can see a demo of flash on Android here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/htchero.html

If you are a web developer, you can learn more about making flash work on Android here:
http://www.adobe.com/mobile

New portfolio site!

hey hey — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:26:20 +0000

Woohoo! That only took 2 years… (really 2 weeks once I sat down to do it.)

If you find any bugs, please just email me.

Shadowbox.js: Flash and Javascript doing a jig

hey hey — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:17:14 +0000

Websites these days are simply layers of technologies stacked on top of one another. Every member of the digital sandwich doing what they do best. HTML structuring, CSS styling, Flash flashing, etc, etc…
Sometimes they all play well together and sometimes it’s an alley way knife fight.

I recently completed a project that involved creating little flash widgets that would call a pop up using some sort of js lightbox library. Turns out this is not as simple as I thought it would be. After auditioning 10 (that’s right 10) lightboxes I finally emerged with a winner: Shadowbox.

The issue:
Most lightboxes use the rel attribute to call the popup function. As far as I can tell, there is no way to insert a rel attribute inside of a getURL() in Actionscript. To be honest, i had lots of other issues with the lightboxes I tried: browser capability, conflict with other js libraries I was using (jquery), inconsistent behavior, inability to load html pages (vs just images), etc.. etc..

The solution:
Shadowbox allows you to set up a custom function for opening an instance of the popup. You simply feed that function name, proceeded by javascript: into the getURL() and voila!

Step 1:
Download Shadowbox and buy a license! if you intend to use it for commercial purposes. Come on, y’all. It’s 20 bucks. Let’s support our awesome open source developers.

Step 2:
Embed the scripts properly in your header:

Step 3:
Initialize Shadowbox (with the required players – read more here) and then create a custom function in javascript in your html document. :

Step 4:
Create a flash piece with a getURL function applied to a button.

Step 5:
Feed the properly formatted URL with the custom function name into the getURL:

button_btn.onRelease = function ()
{
getURL(“javascript:popUpFunction( ‘hello_world.html’);”)
}

Step 6:
Embed your flash object. I generally use SWFObject.

Step 7:
Jump up and down and do a little dance when it works.

I’ve even created a working sample for you, just to make it that much easier.

DOWNLOAD A COMPLETE TUTORIAL

FYI: If you run it locally, Flash will try to verify that you have security clearance for that file. It’s not an error. It’s a security measure.