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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
painting by Paul Gauguin at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Please take this short survey

Defining Multimedia by Ken Jordan (link)
Please read this article for next week.

Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (link)
Web site supporting the book by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan

This is the correct book:
Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash 8 in 24 Hours by Philip Kerman

Apparently I goofed when I placed the Coop book order. They have the book for the previous version of Flash. They are now ordering the correct version. Here's an Amazon link to the correct book.

Sorry about that!

Here are the example files we will be working with tonight (link)

Flash Animation Learning Guide from Adobe.
This is a good review of the animation material we covered in class tonight (link).

Flash Graphic Effects Learning Guide from Adobe
Details the filter and blend effects discussed tonight (link).

There are lots of other good learning resources on the Adobe site.

Flash Rotoscoping Tutorial (link)
There is a very detailed tutorial on how to rotoscope in Flash (don't miss the "here" link on that page)

Flash "Rotoscoping" example (it's not true rotoscoping but rather an example of using 'trace bitmap' in Flash on a sequence of images (link)

Example files for tonight's class (link)

Audio Recording & Editing Resources
Digital Audio Overview (link)
Garageband (tutorial)
Audacity - free cross-platform audio editor (link) (simple tutorial)
Using Audio in Flash (link)

Using Video in Flash Resources
Adobe Learning Guide (link)

Here are the examples files for tonight (link) along with lecture notes (link)

The revised syllabus has also been posted (link).

We will be conducting an experiment in group programming tonight to build this small project: Faux Pong

Download the work file (link)

Here is the completed "faux pong" file (link). Take a read through the code and see if you can follow it. Try changing some of the values and see what happens. Once you know how to program PONG, you can program just about anything.

Next week after looking at Project 2 we will go over the program flow, defining and calling functions, and controling Flash sound and text in depth.

Be the ball!

Lecture notes
History of Pong
Wikipedia reference
A version of Pong in a radically shifted context: Blinkenlights

You may find these sample chapters from Colin Moock's book: ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide useful. Although the book was written for Flash MX, most of the material is still relevant to Flash 8.

http://www.moock.org/asdg/samples/moockasdg2-ch13.pdf
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/actionscript.html
http://www.moock.org/asdg/samples/moockasdg2-ch03.pdf

Tonight we will be finishing up the programming pong exercise and looking at the Flash Sound and Text classes.
Sound class
Faux Pong completed

The link to the Sound class (external .as file) is broken. Here it is again (link)

Line Rider (toy? game? art?) Line Rider official site Line Rider fan site

Animator vs. Animation

Watercolour Park (Tate Online piece)

There are some interesting art examples at the Incident web site, including some dealing with memory and time.

--from the exhibit notes:

THE DETAIL

Between the subject and the object, between the perceiver and the
perceived. As we shift from the detail to the entirety, the change in
scale is ascertained through comparison. Can a detail exist all by
itself? Would it still be a detail? Do we have to stop once we arrive at
the detail? Can't we just keep going until the detail breaks up into
endless fragments of further details?

Yes, tonight we will have a quiz to review the Pong related scripting.

Here again is the work file. This is intended to be a low stress quiz to identify any problems or questions in writing basic actionscript. You will be able to use the Flash help but not the completed 'faux pong' file elsewhere on this site. We will also answer questions and provide help in the event you get stuck.

Project Submissions
When submitting your projects, please do not send me the source. Instead you should .zip it, put it on your web site and send me the URL, along with the URL to view your project. Also, please name your Flash source file with the following convention:

firstInitial_lastName_projectNumber.fla

So my Project 3 would be:

rPardi_p3.fla

OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media: McKenzie Wark and David Weinberger
http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints/

DATE: March 28, 7 pm
VENUE: Emerson College, Bordy Theater, 216 Tremont Street, Boston
STREAMED LIVE: http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints/2007/live.php
BROADCAST TO SECOND LIFE:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Emerson%20Island/153/109/24
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL!

Here's the simple pong file that I put together at the end of class

Download file

Tonight's work files: Download file

We will be covering loading movieClips on the fly using attachMovie/removeMovieClip,
arrays and Listeners (Key + Mouse).

Array Tutorial
Key.addListener Tutorial

I just discovered the Flash-Creations.com site and I highly recommend spending some time digging through it - both for general techniques and scripting tutorials. The references and examples are excellent!

Notes Section
Main Page

Star Animation Example File: Download file

Here is the list of topics we came up with. Got another - email me!

Preloader
Imaging API/Drawing API
Components
Masking
Multi-dimensional Arrays
Network/Database Communication

Here's what is on the menu for the next two weeks

Next week I will do walk-throughs on the topics below. See the links for the relevant tutorials:

Preloader (link)
Network/Database Communication (link) (link)

Masking (link) (link)
Multidimensional Arrays (link)

Sebastian will discuss these topics the following week:
Components (link) (link)

Imaging API/Drawing API (link)

Adobe Boston Users Group website is at:
http://www.abug.us

The Boston Flash Platform User Group's website is at:
http://www.bfpug.com

----------------------------------------
Topic: Flash Physics Simulations
Presenter: James Battat
Aaron Gibralter
Date: Thursday, April 19, 2007
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Cost: Free
Where: MIT Stata Building
AKA Building 32, on this map:
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg
Room 32-141

Description:

As part of a Harvard Presidential Instructional Technology Fellowship
(PITF) summer project we developed a suite of interactive mechanical
physics simulations for a course on Mechanical Systems. Physical
systems can exhibit complex behavior. With the use of computer
simulations, it is possible to teach students about the nature of these
systems without trudging through complicated differential equations. We
found that several canned animations demonstrating physical phenomena
existed on the web, but we noticed a surprising lack of full-up
interactive physics simulation engines in Flash. We aimed to fill that
void by developing a virtual physics lab using Flash (ActionScript 2.0).
We modeled our work on the open-source Java project at
www.MyPhysicsLab.com.

Example site using the drawing API
Webcam motion tracking using Bitmapdata API
A demo of motion tracking
A game using motion tracking

Here are Sebastian's example files from last week (link))

Tonight we will be experimenting with an old Surrealist composition technique: exquisite corpse.

Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.

The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, "Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). Other examples are: "The dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box right" and "The Senegal oyster will eat the tricolor bread." These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group" resulting from a process of what Ernst called "mental contagion." Ref.

Exquisite Corpse (link) (link)

Class work files (link)

Starting Instructions

Ok - here we go:

Karl Ozaeta
Giovanni Gensale
jeungah kim
Jenny Davis
Guinevere Moyle
Jason Meinert
Ashley Umbro
Anthony Cahillane
Jennifer Grygiel
Sarah Tan
Rasvan ILIESCU
Christian Botting
Mike Pastore
Andrea Piekarski