Flash Project: Toronto Skyline

The Toronto skyline icon was something I created using Illustrator for a project in my Graphic Communications class this semester. Because I had spent so much time on it and was really happy with it, I didn't feel like I got enough use out of it so I thought I'd use it for this project as well. My concept for the rollover was Toronto "dying" at the end of the day with the sun setting and then "coming to life" at night.

To create my images, I used Photoshop - mainly gradients for the skies, fills for the negative spaces, crops of real photos for the lake and lens flare rendering effects for the glare of the sun and shine of the moon. I would rate my comfort level with Photoshop as 3 out of 5, and 1 out of 5 for Flash as it was my first time using the program.

Congrats again!

Hi there, great news, our class was awarded a trophy from Jesse Jackson's class.

Jesse says:
Our class would like to congratulate the Canvas Cake group for making it to the top 3 of our favourite experiences presented at Activate: Experiments in Experience Design. Your experience was without a doubt very interactive, fun and delicious! Our class would like to give you this prize which symbolizes the power of teamwork because it is strong teamwork that lead your class to create one of the most compelling experiences at Activate.

Well done!

Flash Britney

I would have liked to spend much, much more time on the Photoshop, i've used it before in high school, but i don't have the program at home to practice with so i'm not very experienced. I choose these images really quickly because i got into class late and needed to spend time on learning how to use Flash! (which i've never used before). So, unfortunately the quality/subject matter is not the greatest, but under the circumstances i think it will do. In doing this quickly, i decided to do something funny, who doesn't enjoy laughing and cringing at Britney Spears? The effect is supposed to be both humorous and startling. I replaced the backgrounds, cut out the figures and put makeup on her face in the second image. I wanted the first to look beautiful and the second to be really frightening, i would have done much more to their faces, perfect/dripping makeup, twinkle in the eyes/eyes turn red, and found much more effective backgrounds. 

Manet

Cake Slicer 2: The Revelation

well, listen up, Joe, It's annoying staring at a cake all day and not even getting to eat any in the end. I've decided to call in the best of the best to take care of the kind of business that no one nowadays has the guts to do. Why? well, who wants to ruin a perfectly good cake anyways? But its about time things return to their natural balance and so things must be sliced just in time.

My idea was to have a picture of a cake and have it sliced in half by someone once the mouse cursor rolls over it, but I didn't have enough time to add any actionscript. Its not that I have any trouble with actionscript, hell I even made a whole game with it once, but I am a little rusty having not used flash in more than 3 years. It was also hard for me to remember the basics of timelines and keyframes and that I'm supposed to add a motion tween to get things to move right.

I originally wanted a fancy looking flash when the cake gets sliced, but I couldnt figure that out in time either. I probably would have had both the cake and the stage dim slightly, and then would have used the line tool to draw a line animation diagonally across the stage to represent 'slicing'. And after it was done, the whole image would get really bright, really fast, and before you know it the two slices of cake would move apart. but unfortunately that couldnt be done so now all we have is two slices of cake just being randomly pulled apart.

I manipulated the two images, by making the ninja character a little shorter to make him just a little sillier looking, and I cut the cake from another photo which originally had a very busy background. I also changed the colours of the cake slightly so it would appear flatter and a little more clip arty.