I consider myself extremely comfortable with the Flash CS4 workspace, and am working to learn actionscript. In the meantime, I am creating interactive soundscapes and refining my animation skills. These pursuits challenge me and my desire to always be learning.
What we have here is my first attempt at a fairly "long" animation. If you are curious as to the subject of the above video, there is an explanation. Each year, our family does a "homemade Christmas." Most of the time, this means quilts, mix tapes, photography, or even food (A few of us are aspiring chocolatiers). I, however, decided to go digital last year and make a video. This one is a redux of the popular "12 Days of Christmas" carol, with each day featuring a family member and an accompanying inside joke. My wife and I dubbed our new lyrics over a public-domain karaoke track using Logic Audio. Please forgive our...harmonizing (or lack thereof). I created almost all of the assets for this video from the ground up, excluding the obvious pictures.
I could easily spend another 40 hours perfecting the nested movie clips, musical quality, and timing of the motion tweens, but it was an extremely educational project and I'd rather put my efforts into new ventures! Some of the difficulties I encountered in making this video are inspiration for material in my tutorials section. Hopefully I can help save someone a great deal of time when they go to render down their own tween-/filter-rich animation. As it turns out, Flash CS4 filters/nested movie clips do not render when exporting a Flash animation as an image sequence...hence a few minor glitches in this video! I must say, it was quite a hit with the family.
