The Legendary American musician died today - I started listening to his music throught a remix collaboration he did with Jamie xx "We're new here", which is probably my favourite album this year. However through this introduction I have been making my way through his back catalogue of dark, subtle gems. This track is the title track off his recent album "I'm new here".
A legend in his own lifetime - r.i.p.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
gTLD (generic top-level domain)
I have just heard about the release date of gTLD's being in June this year - in a nutshell a generic top level domain is a .com, .net etc. The release will allow registration of a variety of categories of domains - e.g brands, countries and generic. The most valuable being .usa, .xxx, .videos, the mind boggles at the options open to entrepreneurs and I see that many will see this in a similar vein to gold and oil rushes in the past.
I am only starting to read about it so will report more in the future, here are a few facts:
- The evaluation fee is estimated at US$185,000. with a $5000 deposit.
- The application window will likely last for three months.
- The evaluation process is expected to last from 8 to 18 months.
source: http://www.icann.org/
I am only starting to read about it so will report more in the future, here are a few facts:
- The evaluation fee is estimated at US$185,000. with a $5000 deposit.
- The application window will likely last for three months.
- The evaluation process is expected to last from 8 to 18 months.
source: http://www.icann.org/
Monday, May 16, 2011
Flash Player Penetration - web and mobile
According to Adobe - Flash player penetration is as high as 99% in mature markets (these being the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.) and as high as 99.5% in the US/Canada and Europe.
Additionally Flash penetration on mobile devices is on the rise with the following operating systems supporting Flash Player: Android™, BlackBerry® Tablet OS, and HP webOS.
The following graph represents Adobes predictions of Flash penetration on mobile devices towards the year 2015.
Source: http://www.adobe.com
Additionally Flash penetration on mobile devices is on the rise with the following operating systems supporting Flash Player: Android™, BlackBerry® Tablet OS, and HP webOS.
The following graph represents Adobes predictions of Flash penetration on mobile devices towards the year 2015.
Source: http://www.adobe.com
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Bones tool in Flash CS5
Bones tool in Flash CS5 
The bones tool can be a great way to simplify the shape tween process in flash - shape tween can be a very klunky way of animating with the bone tool some simple shape tweens - especially limb animations are made very simple.
However this tool does have some serious limitations - such as obligatory black outlines and some erratic behaviours that will hopefully be ironed out in future revisions
I will run through a very simple example of how to use the bone tool below:
1. Create a new flash file
2. draw or import a picture of a hand and arm
3. use the bone tool and draw out a bone by clicking and dragging for the upper arm.
6. You can then animate the hand and arm by creating keyframes (F6) in the main timeline and clicking on the circular handles on the hand.
- The bones have IK (inverse kinematics) which basically means there is a heirarchy - if you rotate the first handle all the bones will rotate with that handle - if you move the handle on one of the fingers only that handle will move.
- You need to understand that each bone has limits to what it controls so don't go too crazy witht the range of movement or your lines will cross over.
- You cannot edit the graphic after you have applied the bones - unless you delete the bones
- There are more powerful parameters you can access in the properties tab - but that needs to be covered in another tute.
The bones tool can be a great way to simplify the shape tween process in flash - shape tween can be a very klunky way of animating with the bone tool some simple shape tweens - especially limb animations are made very simple.
However this tool does have some serious limitations - such as obligatory black outlines and some erratic behaviours that will hopefully be ironed out in future revisions
I will run through a very simple example of how to use the bone tool below:
1. Create a new flash file
2. draw or import a picture of a hand and arm
3. use the bone tool and draw out a bone by clicking and dragging for the upper arm.
4. Do the same for the forearm
5. continue creating bones for the hand.
6. You can then animate the hand and arm by creating keyframes (F6) in the main timeline and clicking on the circular handles on the hand.
- The bones have IK (inverse kinematics) which basically means there is a heirarchy - if you rotate the first handle all the bones will rotate with that handle - if you move the handle on one of the fingers only that handle will move.
- You need to understand that each bone has limits to what it controls so don't go too crazy witht the range of movement or your lines will cross over.
- You cannot edit the graphic after you have applied the bones - unless you delete the bones
- There are more powerful parameters you can access in the properties tab - but that needs to be covered in another tute.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Illustration - wedding invite
I am currently working on a wedding invite for some triathletes - the concept will be turned into a animation of the couple riding their bike to a church. I have built a demo of the animation using bones to display the concept - look out for a step by step on using bones in Flash cs5 to create this animation.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Colorzilla
I have been using colorzilla lately - a color sampling add-on for firefox.
It is quite cool and so simple - it just displays an eyedropper tool in the footer bar of firefox and you can click and choose a color from in the firefox window - so handy.
It is quite cool and so simple - it just displays an eyedropper tool in the footer bar of firefox and you can click and choose a color from in the firefox window - so handy.
It also has a zoom and favorites which are also neat features.
COPASO - Colour Palette Creation
Found this cool site with a multitude of cool colour tools the best being COPASO.
It has both a basic and advanced control option as well as the ability to pull colours from a photo.
This is also available as a downloaded app for MAC and PC from $29.99.
I will be sure to use this tool in the near future.
Online Music Archive - topinweb.com
Came acrosss this website recently from a family friend. www.topinweb.com it is an amazing resource for free music downloads - not too sure about the legalities behind this site but they sure do have a lot of music available as mp3.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)