Week 9 - Flash Assignment

Artist Statement:
The concept for my flash assignment came to me when I was looking through the sound library in the computer lab. Having heard some of the guitar sound effects I decided to base my flash assignment around a guitar. I also wanted to include classic rock and psychedelic themes. My goal was to create an enjoyable video that highlights the guitar while including bright colours. The target audiences for this movie are classic rock fans who enjoy guitar based music from the psychedelic period.
In order to achieve this goal I used flash and fireworks. Fireworks was used to create all the base images. This was accomplished using the vector tools for the most part. In flash tweening was used to create most of the effects. Multiple layers were used to create dimension and add depth to the movie.
Many challenges were encountered during the creation of the flash movie. One problem which I anticipated was creating animation for the hands to play the guitar. The one that caused the biggest problem was when the hand has to grab the fret board. In order to overcome this problem I had to use trial and error until the desired effect was attained. Even after this I was still not fully happy with how that aspect turned out. I also encountered a problem with the music. When the button to replay the song is selected the music would not start. In order to solve this problem I had to edit the music into two separate layers, one of which began where the movie reverts back to when prompted. The creation of buttons also presented problems in the actionscript; however this was mostly due to error on my behalf and was solved by reviewing how to do it properly helped solve this problem.
This assignment challenged me to learn how to use a program that I had no experience with. Throughout the process I learned how to create flash animations as well as use interactive functions in a compelling way. The functions learned were basic tweening, layering, animating and interactive buttons. I was really happy with the final product that came out of this assignment. I believe I met my goals and objectives and created a compelling guitar movie.

Analysis:
I was very happy with how my flash assignment. I spent a very long time producing the animation and I think the final project reflects the work I put in. This assignment was a real joy to do and is why I was willing to spend so much time working on it. Throughout the assignment I was challenged to acquire a basic knowledge of how Flash works and what can be done with it with a better understanding. After viewing my peers work I was very impressed with the level of creativity in our lab. There were ideas and concepts for this project that I would never have thought of and it speaks volumes for the diverse group of students RTA hosts. It was also very impressive to see some of the techniques other students used that I had not thought to incorporate into my own flash animation.