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.
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.
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.
I’ve seen this sort of thing done in a few places already but for some reason I’ve never tried it myself. We’ve all heard how great the BitmapData class is and been excited by the speed boosts that can be achieved… but just how fast is it?
Following on with the particle theme, I’ve written a script that creates many, many, many pixel-sized bundles of delight…
Hey all. Whilst I patiently await divine Flash inspiration, I’ve decided to revisit the ye olde AS3 particle engine. I’ve now been working with AS3 consistently for just over a month, so my understanding of it and it’s beauty has advanced somewhat.
Back in the AS2 days (oh how I’m glad they’re behind me… touch wood) my general architecture methodology revolved around managing MovieClip depths. With AS3 and the Display List paradigm, things have changed dramatically and coding life is pretty sweet; we get to think more about the problem/implementation and less about the tools.
The following demo and source show a more refined approach than the previous attempts will hopefully give you a good indication of what Flash can handle across different browsers.
I’m settling in at the new job nicely, thanks for asking! This week I had the opportunity to look into Papervision3D and AIR… and let me just say, my Flash-fever has officially returned. Isn’t it great when something like this happens and you realise just how much you love your work!
On Thursday night I went along to the local Twitter meetup group, ‘MTUB‘ (MelbTwitUngrdBrigade). Lightmaker Melbourne sponsored the event and as a result I was prompted to throw something together for the big screen. … so I grabbed the opportunity and decided to visualise the group’s twitter feed PV3D style.
Please welcome the newest addition to the footloosemoose stable of fine online gaming, BigFooty Rules.
BigFooty.com is Australia’s premiere Australian Rules Football (Aussie Rules) forum and they felt that a viral game would give the already competitive members something to play with and would help to bring in new subscribers. They were after something simple, addictive and fun and generally based on the token-looping concept found in games such as BusySanta - this is what I came up with…
This week has been fantastic. I’ve just launched two projects and have managed to find some time to play! I’ve had a crack at a new blog theme (still haven’t decided if I’m going to use it), I’ve made a start on the new footloosemoose.com site, and I’ve had a bunch of game ideas.
What I’ve got to show you is something that I never intended to take this far… although now that I have, I’m starting to think that I should really finish off all of my other game-like experiments!
I’ve created a very simple game that will reward reflexes, concentration and nimble fingers. Here’s a very quick chat on the influencing factors and then you can kill some time on the keypad.
Announcing the launch of a new Flash Game, Wenger’s Beach Watch.
Izaac from Komiti Creative looked after all of the design and project management and passed the programming and game animation to me.
