Well, it’s not quite Monet or Renoir, but I bet van Gogh would’ve given his left ear for a piece of this action…
Ok, so maybe I’m being a little flexible with the ‘Impressionist’ title but I think what we’ve got here is a valid way of artistically presenting images in Flash. Warm up the Louvre… I need somewhere to hang this stuff!
Here’s a quick demo of an image filter that I thought up during one of my last projects though it never managed to find itself in the launch.
Click through to see it in action.
There comes a time in every programmer’s career when they are drawn to the Mandelbrot flame. Like the rest of us, I’ve known about it since I was a kid, but never have I really worried about checking it out. I guess I felt that the concept was familiar enough already - what could I gain from touching the code?
It’s hard to explain just how awestruck I am at how wonderful and beautiful the pattern is. In many of my experiments I’m trying to formulate complex patterns from simple rulesets, in hope of tripping over that line where the emergent behavior becomes art. Having played with the code a little, I’ve now realised that the Mandelbrot set is my Mona Lisa.
Check it out for yourself.
Let me take a moment of your time and tell you about the site we recently developed for the new Honda Accord.
What started as a prototype that saw 3D dots swarm from location to location, has evolved into an interesting microsite that shows off the Accord’s most revolutionary features.
Here’s a quick proof-of-concept for an idea I had this afternoon.
As you’ll see, the concept has a few flaws and limitations - and to be honest, I’d be surprised if it hadn’t been done somewhere before - but hopefully it will be new to you and perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll think of some way to make it better.
Here’s a site that’s worth a look for all those who appreciate interesting navigation, innovative use of both 2D and 3D… and connoisseurs of anything cool.
Ryan and Jason (brothers/buddies??) proclaim their solemn oath “to inject pure premium-ness into everything we touch”. Who can argue with that strategy? Bravo.
Their site oozes slick ribbons of style… I feel cooler for just looking at it…. get your dose:
For those that don’t religiously check the FWA Site of the Day (SOTD) for inspiration, let me draw your attention to something that popped up a few days ago…
Asimo.com.au got site of the day - and what makes that particularly noteworthy is that it was made by a few of the guys here at work! Huge congrats go to the lads involved! I’m stoked to be embedded in an office that produces such great work.
For those unfamiliar with the concepts, Asimo is an advanced humaniod robot created by Honda and The FWA is a site that awards excellence in web development.
Here’s a little more about the project:
Here’s a quick link for those who are interested in AS3 and the 3D sexiness that comes with it.
I’m not sure how new it is - or even if it’s using Papervision3D or Sandy or an equivalent - I do know that it looks damn cool and on my machine its blazing fast, even with over 1000 sprites.
I’ve just found this game online and am quite impressed with its concept and execution.
We’ve probably all seen puzzle/strategy games like this before - I know I’m feeling a little déjà vu - but for some reason this one seems to stand out. Probably because its visuals are so minimal and elegant in their execution and the contextual tools they provide when certain elements are selected are quite intuitive.
On behalf of my new employer, DTDigital, and their client, Cascade, here’s a quick plug for our latest project… TheNaturalOrder.com.au
I wont go into too much detail here (as I really think you should just visit the site!), but I will say that I was lucky enough to be responsible for ~95% of the coding with Eric Fitzgerald responsible for the design.
I had the idea for this experiment a few months ago and I’ve actually attempted it a few times - each iteration being close to what I was intending to achieve but alas, not close enough. This time I’m happy enough with the solution to release it to the world.
I’ve decided that I’m really quite fascinated with three concepts in particular, broadly these are - 1) Automata/Intelligent Agents 2) Intransitivity (the Rock-Paper-Scissors rule set), and 3) Organising information spatially, or by proximity. You’ll see these ideas again and again throughout this site (and no doubt even more in the future!).
This latest adventure touches on all three of these concepts. Brace yourself.
In the next week or two I’m going to have to put together a game that involves bouncing balls off inclined lines. About half way towards implementing my own solution, I kicked myself for forgetting about APE and then clicked off in hot pursuit.
So I just thought I’d show you the simple little ditty that I through together this morning before work. APE, by ActionScript gun Alec Cove, was surprisingly quite simple to get into and it provides you with a variety of options that will hopefully suit your (and my) introductory needs.
At the moment it supports circular, rectangular and wheel-like particles and spring constraints. Take a quick look and check back in a few days for more APE mischief.
As much as I loathe the fact that Adobe MAX is happy to occur without me (one day I’ll get there), at least the keynote surfaces on the intertubes quickly enough.
With advanced text support, 3D perspective functionality and the new Pixel Shader API’s (Hydra), this release (Astro) looks like its going to rock your world! :)
Check it out…
Quite a while ago, I stumbled across some documentation that described a simple maze generation algorithm. A few days ago I decided to play around with it and this is where I ended up.
If you’re familiar with what makes me tick, you’ll know that I really enjoy watching how complex and interesting patterns can evolve from a few simple rules. What you’ll see when you click through, I hope, is precisely that.
Unless you’ve been asleep in a ditch (that can’t get wireless internet) you’ll have heard about Seam Carving and would’ve been wondering how long it will take for the ActionScript community to get in line. Well, it didn’t take long.
For those who came in late, Dr Ariel Shamir and Dr Shai Avidan have developed a process that enables you to resize images without losing key visual information. Since then, I’ve seen three or four attempts to achieve the effect in ActionScript and all have been quite impressive.
First check out the YouTube demo and then see where we’re up to in terms of an ActionScript implementation.
