BP_14_FlashTweenShapes

Flash Professional CS5 Essential Training Tween Shapes

Now this is what I really want to learn, how to animate shapes in Flash, but I bit off more than I could chew. My goal was to take that logo graphic below and make it move around, but alas, I could not learn it enough to do it. I do get the basic idea though. Click the above video link from Lynda.com, it gives a short overview of how the Flash program animates a shape by morphing the in between shapes from a starting shape and ending shape that you specify. Kind of how a Ken Burns move goes from the start point to an end point on a photo. But Flash goes further by interpolating the data of the shape parameters. The animated bits or shapes are called "Tweens" just for that reason, because they are in between one shape and another.

BP_15_FlashTweenMotion

Flash Professional CS5 Essential Training Tween motion

The next aspect of a tween this video shows is how a more complex tween, the biker can be moved through the timeline across the background. That part is very easy.

I am excited to learn Flash because I think it is so versitile and can create simple to complex scenes. I hope I can learn enough soon to animate a whole story.

BP_13_FlashLearning

Here's a graphics I made, an ETC logo, sort of... for this post.

These simple drawing tools, i.e; ovals, splashes, colors and text work similarly to other graphic programs, so it wasn't hard to create this. I find the tutorial pretty easy to follow - and so, I learned about some terms and functions I did not know and would be lost without like, creating an object as a "merge object" or a "drawing object." These properties define how shapes attach and or are related to each other. The merge object effects its neighbor's shape, for example, one's positive mass creates a negative space reciprocally on the object touching it. Drawing object is when objects are seemingly connected but are in fact separate entities overlapping, so when moved, look whole. The shapes in my logo above are object drawings, so if I pull them apart, they look the same.

Adding text and color was a snap too.

BP_12_Flash

I choose to learn about Flash this week. I have wanted to for YEARS, and having this assignment to get this started is a gift.

Firstly, I have been in advertising graphic production for over 25 yrs, so I know something about how graphic programs work, and I can do some basic designing, but cannot fully utilize all the capabilities of Photoshop and Illustrator etc. but I am aware of the breath and depth of such capabilities. But those programs are 2 dimensional and static, they don't move!

So, even though I am somewhat familiar with the language and workflows of such programs, I find Flash to be a foreign entity! First because it uses so many different file types, all made more complex because of movement in time. In the center panel above are five red icons for different types you can start with. So, the first thing I learned is that the main type of files are, A.) the working files, that end with .fla suffix - these would be the raw application files, where you INPUT the data and create the project. These would be equivalent to, .doc, .xlxs, or .ps suffixes for MS Word, Excel and Adobe Photoshop respectively. The other type is B.) the file has an .sfw suffix and this would be an OUTPUT file format like a jpeg.

The other types are still a mystery to me, but I'll get there!

BP11_OMM_StorybirdVideo

BP10_Comment on Torrey's Blog

See my comment on Torrey's blog by clicking this link.

BP9_Comment on Lori's Blog

See my comment using this link to Lori's Blog

Image purchased royalty free from Dreamstime_14079360.jpg

BP8_StoryBird

I just created a little story in Storybird. http://storybird.com/books/

It's about my two little dogs, Bella and Gracie. StoryBird has hundreds of art scenes and themes to choose from. Just click and drag them onto the drawing board and write a narrative, adding pages, pictures and sentences. You can even collaborate, inviting others to write it with you. Then you can publish the story privately or to the sites public area for all the world to enjoy. What a cool way for kids to learn the basics of storytelling, graphic art and collaboration.

BP7_OMM_VoiceThread

BP6_Comment to Mike

See my comments by linking to Mike's blog

...and see my own little video I did 1,2,3 on the web 2.0 tool Mike found.

BP5_Comment to Curt

See my comment by linking to Curt's AR Blog

Image downloaded free from http://www.edupics.com/coloring-picture-marching-band-player-i8639.html

BP4_HistoryPin.com

I am continuing this post from my post at HistoryPin.com. Here, I began a story that this picture recalls about visiting my grand parents on Long Island, NY, when I was a child.

con't... "The backyard gardens were a particular joy in the summer; as was the long days spent on Jones Beach and coming back to their house for a home cooked dinner of fresh picked vegetables, especially tomatoes and zucchini. The house always smelled of dill, no matter what else was cooking.

At the beach, it was funny to see my grandmother getting her almost ankle length house dress wet, wading in the waves while clutching her big floppy straw hat, keeping it from blowing away and balancing herself so not to plop down into the swirling froth. Warmer more joyful times are not in my memory. I built upon those memories all of my life by going back to those beaches as often as I could. Now that I live in Chicago, the Atlantic Ocean and those salty beaches are what I miss most."

HistoryPin.com is an amazing web2.o tool that hopes to build a world history, one story and picture at a time. In partnership with Google maps, one can post a picture, a date as far back as far back as 1840, and write a story joining them. Connecting story and place are nothing less than sacred according to Joe Lambert, Director of the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley CA., where they have been doing the work of connecting up people and their stories with places since 1993. He claims that this work is a healing ministry for our culture and planet; "If we had to sum up our learning, it would be that we see storywork, and our work in particular, as only valuable when it is owned as a technology of healing by a local population. It is part of any number of useful recovery technologies in the face of the particular impact of globalized consumer capitalism on our identities, on our connections to each other, on the way we make our communities cohere, and our societies healthy. We need help. We either return to the sacred wisdom of place and make our world a whole, or it appears we will perish, on-by-one in a series of new fangled illnesses, or in one vast collective disaster of an over-heated planet."

So, I started to heal my own little bit of sacred space by using this web 2.0 tool History Pin; check it out and reclaim and share some of your history and identity too.

Lambert, J., Digital storytelling, capturing lives, creating community,
Berkeley, CA., Digital Diner Press, 2009, pg. xvi

BP_Diigo Group

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

ETC, ETC, ETC...

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

Here's to Action Research!

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

This is my FSO Page. I have a LinkedIn profile, search me in your gadget and check it out.

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

This is my home Page. I used the background of Italy so I would recognize it easily.

BP1_Google Reader

In the beginning...

I'm going to make a sweeping comment about religion.

I think it is fair to say that at the heart of many religions, maybe even all, is a keystone story of a person who claims to have had a personal experience with the Divine, God, Ultimate Truth or go ahead, pick a name that suits you.

Here's a short list of characters with such experience:

Krishna

Buddha

Abraham

Jesus

Mohamed

George Bush (?)

...and the list goes on and on, into infinity it seems, and into our own lives as we know them. So what about this? We tend to be skeptical about any mention of this type of thing today, and are especially suspicious of this phenomena happening to a person of power or our most marginalized people - that wandering schizophrenic claiming to be god. We drug them and put them away or leave them walking barefoot in their delusions. I guess powerful people have been using the claim of divine inspiration to manipulate their constituencies for as longs as the real beginning of history where also, people have been screaming about the end of the world, wandering barefoot, eating nothing but locusts.

So, what is it about this phenomena that is so compelling and believable and also so outrageous and scary?

Maybe it's in the construction of the stories themselves, or the times they were told, or maybe there is something really real and true about them that we all sort of know somehow. Maybe we just love the mystery of it.

That is what I am going to explore in my action research project.

I am going to use the technique of digital story telling to make links to the classic and/or more obscure religious experience narratives in our scriptures and the everyday awe and wonder that many of us experience in or own lives. We might find that we all have some surprising things in common with people across the millennia and globe today, the powerful, the crazy, the devout and even the atheist, in how these experiences shape our individual and collective histories.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb This feature about Philip Dick's "Valis" experience was published in Weirdo The comic is public domain

Here is my Google Reader panel