Here's a demo I made, showcasing a little interactive video in Flash. The whole thing is controlled by an XML that you can use to "stitch" video sequences together as you wish. The demo also shows, which video asset is loaded and unloaded at which time... The camerawork was done by Will Russel (firstborn's studio producer) and the model was Susanna (our intern from Hyper Island).
Related Link:
http://www.jensfischer.us/demos/interactiveVideo/
The following post is part of firstborn's mentorship program. For more information and a full table of contents, check out the mentorship main post.
Reading an XML
download: 005_xmlExample.zip
This example teaches you how to load and read from an XML file.
Custom Events
download: 007_customEvents.zip
This example shows you how to extend Events, to create your own custom Events that can pass along important data to the listener. Have a look at the code and you'll see why that makes the developer's life a hell of a lot easier.
The following post is part of firstborn's mentorship program. For more information and a full table of contents, check out the mentorship main post.
Stage Demo
download: 001_stageDemo.zip
Many of firstborn's websites take up 100% of the browser-window's height and width, and then center the website in the middle. This little script shows how to achieve that.
Font Demo (embedded in main swf)
download: 002_fontDemoInternal.zip
This example demonstrates how to embed a font into the library of a flash file and then create dynamic text fields, using that font. While this practice is easy and sufficient to help you understand the basic principles of creating dynamic textfields in flash, it is not optimal, because you would usually try to load fonts after the application has started, to avoid a too heavy initial load.
loading external Fonts
download: 006_externalFont.zip
The next step of Font handling: loading external fonts. While the method in this example still isn't the most advanced, it is a lot more professional than the one you learned before. Pay attention to the timeline in the font.fla, because it contains important code, that registers the fonts so you can use them in your main Flash application...
Button Class Example
download: 004_buttonExample.zip
A basic button class example, with rollover and rollout states. When you create a new instance of the button class, you can set the text of that button and the button size adapts automatically to it. This example also shows you the basic usage of the Tweening Engine "Tweener".
On December 5th, Firstborn beat Big Spaceship in the first, soon-to-be-annual gotoAndPlay() tournament. The reward for our 2:1 (Basketball, Table Tennis vs. Foosball) victory was a redirect for a day. For one day, Bis Spaceship's portfolio was replaced by a very special version that Eric Decker and I developed together...
Related Link:
http://www.firstbornmultimedia.com/websites/08_sinktheship/
About:
As part of firstborn's internship program each trainee is assigned/can choose a mentor out of firstborn's team, to help him strengthen the skills in a certain area. The mentor program is an intense 1on1 training, which consists out of a mix of exercises, tutorials and work on real projects under the lead of the mentor. This category of my blog here is a steadily growing collection of useful resources and little exercises for those who picked me as their Actionscript mentor.
Code Examples:
- Stage Size/Resize, Font loading and a Button Class
- Loading XML and creating custom Events
Exercises:
Ressources
* I'll update this post regularly, for it to serve as a table of content for this blog-category...
I wrote this little Drawing-Api script in Actionscript 3 for my current project at firstborn. It's a slightly improved version of one of Mathieu's old experiments ("Liquid Form")... Drag around the black areas above with your mouse, to join or seperate the circles.
We did it again... I got up at 5 in the morning and joined 11 other firstborn members at the Reebok Sports Club in NY, to play some basketball before going to work. The perfect way to start a day. On a side note: If you're familiar with college basketball and the Florida Gators in particular, you might recognize our intern Brett Swanson...
After the game we went to Barney Greengrass and had a huge breakfast to restore the lost energy...
Based on an Actionscript 2 solution from "polygeek", I wrote this lightning effect in Actionscript 3. You can download the class here. Be aware that this is a first draft tho, so the class is far from properly commented. Apart from that it works fine and is a lot of fun to play around with.
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Related Links:
http://polygeek.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw
Firstborn wins the interactive annual award from "Communication Arts" magazine in the self-promotional category.
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Related Links: http://www.commarts.com/interactive/cai08/newFirstborn.html
Firstborn has been nominated for the .net “Design Agency of the Year” award (in the running with some amazing companies, including AKQA, Poke, Big Spaceship, Barbarian Group, FI, etc.). The .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development, mixing public opinion with the insights of a leading panel of judges from the likes of Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google.
Anyone can vote for the winner online. That means YOU can too. Please take a minute to vote and then get everyone you know - friends, family, pets etc. – to do the same. You do not have to vote in every category so this will be quick and painless (we're category number 9). Public voting will close on October 13th and then the judges take the top three people’s choice nominees in each category and choose the winner.
*edit: We scored a good 2nd place. Congrats to the winner F-I. Next year it's going to be us.
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Related Link: http://www.thenetawards.com