This is the link to my finished project....because of the size of the window...the text that is suppose to appear over every button has gotten cut off even though i fixed it a little bit in dreamweaver....originally all the text is visible.


Final Poject

final finished

i have come to finish my final project which is pretty much a false desktop....where the buttons do crazy things.....i didnt get to make every button do something because of the restraint on time, each button took a lot longer to animate than i had originally expected, but about 6 or 7 of the buttons do something so i am okay with the results. I focused a lot more on sound and sound effects on this project and im glad i did because they all seemed to work out. I learned a lot about making movie clips from this project that i hand known before so i have acquired some new knowledge.

An ambitious project

for my final project that involves the combination of 3 of our past projects...ive decided to re-create a desktop in flash...that when the user clicks on the icons...they do random things that arent funtional and dont really serve a purpose....so i will be tinkering with icons on the desktop and how they work and what they do for the viewer visually. One other project that kind of incorporates what i might be going after is this video called animator vs. animation.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=X8orofVRIlU

the animation tinkers with the desktop icons and i would really like to do the same type of thing. It will look like one is navigating through a real desktop...but once the icons are clicked on it will be obvious that this desktop doesnt do what is expected of it.

Finished project 3 "the randomator"

This is my finished project of the random still life generator...i learned a lot through this project that i hope to use later on down the road. Fun project over

http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/classes/at350/mtmalon/random.swf

I wouldve liked to do more with it, but due to scripting abilities and a time deadline this is what ive come up with and i am still happy with the results.

Scripting

Over the past week ive been developing and refining my project. I had finally decided to create a random still life generator. I have 7 or 8 objects on the screen that will randomly change position based on a random integer assigned to a variable. The objects are only randomly changing their x-coordinate on the plane; they do not change their y-coordinate at all because that type of project would include many many lines of advanced scripting that i dont think i am ready for yet. The scripting involved in this project could be considered minimal to scripting in some other projects ive seen so far, but one has to start somewhere. I have gathered an enormous amount of information with will be valuable for future projects. One of these skills is the knowing how to assign random numbers to a place holder then using the number in that place holder later on in the project. I am pretty satisfied with the progress ive made on this project and i believe it looks pretty good. If i knew more about scripting i might have been able to do a little more with it, but i think for the first project that really involves more than 20 lines of scripting, it's not bad at all.

Random this Random that

I have had a little bit of trouble finding artwork that is random, but did find this example of computer generated artwork.

http://www.random-art.org/

I believe this is also a gallery of art that has been made randomly through a computer somehow

http://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/awang/random.html


I am not sure what i want to do with this project because i understand that there are so many possibilities when it comes to having random elements in a computer. I do know kind of how the random programming works, but im not sure how i want to express that artistically or how much of my project I want to be random, i'll just have to develop some concepts and see how things go.

2nd Project Finished

Here is the link to my final project, let me know what you think

http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/classes/at350/mtmalon/commentaryonsociety.swf

Progression is the key

So i have finally come up with my final idea for my project after days of deliberation and mental strain. I started off using a lightbulb and decided to present a pretty straight forward but power message through my interactive project. My idea is that the screen will start with about 8 or 9 lightbulbs on it. The viewer will be able to click on any of the light bulbs to turn it on. After doing so they will notice that part of a message or background will be lit up only revealing part of it's full idea. The more light bulbs that are clicked on the more of the message the viewer will be able to see. Each light bulb will represent a certain group of people, although im not sure what groups i want represented through each light bulb. The idea is that each group of people sheds light on pieces of the puzzle or problem and that even though they are all trying to achieve the same goal, their light wont be enough to view the entire piece. After all the light bulbs are clicked on a light switch will appear that will be labeled either "Everyone" or "A Collective Effort" and after it is switched on by the user the entire message will be lit up, which means that if the people work as a whole, they will be able to solve more problems than if they work individually and for themselves rather than for the common good.

ideas.......?

So i havent really come up with any concrete ideas for this project yet. Im really not surprised at this at all though, seeing as I usually come up with my ideas in class or whenever im not even thinking about the project. Im sure I will think of something today in class. I do know that im not planning on making a game or anything, even though the examples i posted were more or less games that could be played. Interactivity doesnt mean that the project has to be a game; so i suppose i'll just have to think of some other way for the viewer to interact with my project.

2nd example

I found another example of what I believe is to be expected of our 2nd project. It is another political game that is focused on the war in Iraq. I believe the viewpoint of the artist that made this interactive game is that we are in the war for oil and that is pretty much it. I don't necessarily agree with this artists point of view, but i do believe that this is a good example of the project that is to be expected of us

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/318351

Project # 2

So for this project the idea is to create an interactive piece that has some sort of political or ideological message or twist to it. Ive been searching for some political games that seem to display a message from the creator and have come across one pretty easily.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/361848

This game is a simple fighting game. The combatants are four dominant figures in politics and world affairs. George Bush, Saddam Huissein, Kim Jong Il, and Osama Bin Laden. The idea behind this game is that 2 of the 4 people fight in a very classic two dimensional arena, the first one with 2 kills wins.
I believe that the artist who decided to make this game had a very simple but strong message. He might have felt that since these people were creating war and death that they should be the ones to duke it out personally; not the people that are under control in their countries. The artist might want the viewer to be able to fight it out among political leaders without any real consequences. I believe that this game kind of mocks every person involved because of how they are portrayed and because the animation is very cartoonish; overall i think it's a good example.

Here is a link to the finished product, hope you enjoy!

http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/classes/at350/mtmalon/nocontent.swf

The Finale

So after a good 8 hours of total work on this first project I have finished. The end product is one that I am very satisfied with and might even like to work on and odd onto in the future. I learned a lot about movies, buttons, and very basic scripting in Macromedia Flash and feel that I've used all the skills I have so far to their fullest. I decided to add some other elements of the project like random dots that appear and disappear and I've also added two photos as sort of a background. One is of Rachel Mcadams and the other is of Marilyn Monroe. I believe that this was a great project to start out with.

Warning! Project Update

So after a day to work out my project I have, not surprisingly, decided to travel down a different route . Initially i wanted to incorporate music, but decided that a poject involving music was not the way i wanted to go for my first project. After thinking it over a couple times I decided that i wanted to further another project i did last semester that involved outlines of photographs. I decided to pick one of my favorite actresses as the starlight; Rachel McAdams, because i believe she possesses a natural beauty. I wanted to have a picture collage or even just a single photograph of her on my page. Her features would be outlined and grouped together so that her hair, eyes, face, neck, lips, and shirt were different "parts." The idea is that when the viewer moves the mouse over a certain part, the part changes in pattern and color. Im really trying to show how different patterns and colors work when they are applied to the human shape. I will add on to this project according to how much of the intial picture i get done and how much more I can add given the due date.

I have listened to music a lot today and have decided that i would like my project to incorperate some music that i like and frequently listen to so that i feel that the project has a musical part of my personality. It's a done deal, I'll just have to see how things translate tomorrow when i begin working on the project

Project Ideas

So i've been going over some possible project ideas this weekend and well....let's just say that i don't have a plethora of them. This project has little to no boundaries which makes it rather challenging. I suppose since it is the first project I'm not quite sure what is expected of me or how I will compare to other students in the class seeing as I know nothing about action scripting and my only real help on this project will be due to the fact that I do know how to work Macromedia Flash pretty well. I have decided that i want to do something that will be rather appealing to any audience it might have. I would like anyone looking at it to have to look at it for a while and to kind of get wrapped up in whatever it is. I feel that my real ideas will come to me when im actually doing work on the project.

Exploring the internet as a medium

For my first post I am going to attempt to find a couple internet examples of what our first project might be like. The first project is titled No "content" Web Sketch. I suppose this could mean that what we are going to create does not really have a specific purpose or meaning behind it, but that it will be created mainly for the purpose of existing in cyberspace. This project may even be interactive. I will post the links to sites that I feel could be good examples of this project. I might also use these sites as a reference in the future.
Example #1
http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/

I believe this site fits the "exists in cyberspace but doesnt seem to fulfill a purpose or meaning".....bill, and that is exactly why im posting it. I think this "game" leans in the same direction as this first project will.