21 July 2006
Over the past year or so I've seem to have spent more and more time building animations in Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash). Most of our clients have flash animations, at least on their homepages, and a large proportion of these are fairly complex. We use Actionscript (the Flash programming language) much more these days, often reading data from external XML files to create 'dynamic' animations.One technique I have used quite a lot over the last six months is the particle system - writing a small program to randomly spawn graphic elements within an animation. The Chessington 'bubbles' we created for the re-launch of Bubbleworks was an example. The fireworks element in the Usborne Books at Home 25th Birthday animation is another.
Obviously we play around in flash quite a lot, testing out new programming ideas before we use them 'in anger' for our clients. My latest little test file is a particle system inspired by the Odeon Cinemas online booking advertisement. If you've been to an Odeon cinema in the last couple of years you will doubtless have seen their 'spinny glittery discs' advert, all pink and spangly and accompanied by retro 1960s pop.
Anyway, this is my latest build. Enjoy!
Posted by Mike Gillett at 9:59 AM
