Who needs all those high-end sounds and graphics on proprietary gaming boxes?! Dragon Gamez hosts the Flash game "Stickman Madness" which proves you don't need hi-res to have a lot of fun.
So today has just been filled with toon related posts, hasn't it? In January, Scott Kurtz started a new animated
venture called PVP Alive. The short Flash-based animations were meant to bring PVP into a fully animated funny future,
but no new releases have come out since mid-January (for many reasons I'm sure). So head over to the PVP Alive page,
watch and laugh. The toons show how a still artist can easily use Flash to jump into motion and sound. Of course the
work isn't at the same level as Homestarrunner.com, but it is a good start.
Hopefully some Flasher traffic will incourage Kurtz to pump out some new animations.
InformIT put up a sound tutorial earlier this month that shows how to create a control a couple of sound buttons that
mute and unmute audio that is playing from your library. The tutorial is meant as a starting point for new Flash users
who want to integrate sound into their projects and want to give their users a little needed control of the audio. New
Flashers can extend this tutorial by flipping to the Livedocs at Adobe's site and looking over the Sound object. You can take a user's experience to
a whole new level with audio manipulation via balance, fade, volume and even dynamic control. I recommend even browsing
the Microphone object to look into ways to
create a visual experience that feeds on sounds fed into the user's computer (much like many of us are doing with the
Camera object for video controls).
Jen deHaan just posted a "Site of the
Week" (don't know how Jen sticks to just one...there are so many...and so little time!) called "Denimbirds." Yes, they are a jeans company. They seem to be
Swedish. The site is very nice. Like, Jen, I like the transitions between sections. Nice use of masking. And while the
"Fit Guide" is more so you can see how their different cuts sit on a body (rather than what size will fit
your body), the turning of the models is a nice effect.
OK, that
subject line was just too easy, but I couldn't resist. It doesn't do justice to this site though. I don't know anything
about the band Less, but their site is really well-designed. I love the combination of the
2-D Flash animation with the stop-motion origami stuff (I have a soft spot in my heart for stop-motion animation...from
Rankin-Bass to Brothers Quay). Might have to listen the music
now...
Just got a Monk-e-Mail from a friend! Of course, I couldn't resist sending
one back...and maybe to a few other friends, too...
This is very
cool! Video editing on the web, complete with effects and transitions, in a Flash-based application! Jumpcut is taking the services provided by Google Video and YouTube up a
notch by giving users the tools to create as well as the tools to post and share. You can even remix a video
you find there and repost it. And its all written in Flash! So we have the wedding of Flash as a tool for interactive
environments with Flash as a tool for content delivery (video).
We usually concerned with Flash as a means of
creating interactive, multimedia pieces for use on a personal computer, but Chris Georgenes reminds us that Flash can
be used for a lot more. Check out his article, "Migrating Flash Projects to
Video" on the Flash Dev Center site. He
has some great tips on taking your Flash movies to DVD and broadcast TV. I especially like the nod to Flashants' SWF2Video. A couple of years ago, I
had to reanimate pieces in AfterEffects for DVD menu backgrounds that I'd mocked up using coded animation in Flash
because I couldn't figure out how to output the dynamic Flash movie to video. More recently, I've seen GeoVid's Flash to Video Encoder at work and
been pleased with it, but I'm definitely going to check out SWF2Video now too!
Another fun Flash platform game. Fancy Pants Adventure has some really nice animation, good physics too...what dynamic hair you have
Mr Fancy Pants! The credit here is to ArmorGames.com, but that site
seems to be just another aggregator site. Following the link trail though, I find a credit for "DrNeroCF." Anybody know the doc? Nice work regardless!
Hey, two for the price of one, even! The folks over at Amanita Design have released the second the sequel to the original game, so you can play Samorost and Samorost 2 all afternoon!
Macromedia...er..Adobe...has launched a new sub-site of the Mobile & Devices Dev Center devoted specifically to the new iRiver U10. In case you haven't heard the U10 is a portable media player that just came on the American market. FlashLite 1.1 is baked onto its ROM. Its UI is in FlashLite and you can load FlashLite content onto it (as well as you MP3s, etc.). There's a lot of potential with this little creature.
Pandora is a Flash-based radio station built by the folks over at the Music Genome Project. This is not your average Flash jukebox. You tell Pandora a band or a song that you like, then based on the Genome Project, they serve up songs in a similar vein, your very own radio station. Like TiVo, you can give thumbs up or thumbs down to new songs to refine what they're giving you. Hooks in to buy the songs off of iTunes or the albums from Amazon. A friend of mine complained about the "non-standard Flash UI," but I was comfortable with it after clicking around for a moment.
To prove that Flash is used for all sorts of things (as if you needed that proof) I give you (against my better judgment, really) Mister Nice Hands.
Feels like I blog about Grant Skinner all the time...but when you look at this site, you'll know why.
This IKEA site uses Flash to deliver a great 3D, 360-degree experience. Mike Downey blogged this the other day, and several others have posted about it as well (here, here, and here). But I just can't help putting it out there again. I've gone back a couple of times in the last few days and every time, I'm amazed anew.
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