Sprockets

My Flash artist dabs and squints:

Trial and error is right for an artist. Picture Renoir dabbing at his picture and stepping back to squint at it, over and over.

Drawing That worked for drawing and painting, for years.

Scripts That even worked for scripts, when those were ten-line scripts in ActionScript 2, and she could find an example to start from.

XML But now she buys components for the price of dinner and wine, and configures them with XML. XML is unforgiving. A little off, and you’re left with nothing, a wild nonsense. … Continue Reading

Working lately with a Flash artist on the far side of the earth, at twelve hours time difference. We Skype to exchange files, chat, talk live.

ActionScript 3 is traumatic to her. Flash was whimsical until lately, and she would dash together her own ten-line script now and then, copying an example she found somewhere, and altering it by trial and error. Trial and error is right for an artist. Picture Renoir dabbing at his picture and stepping back to squint at it, over and over. That worked for her ActionScript as well, until … Continue Reading

You know this, but you’ve forgotten. Or I had.

Two things I remembered this week, while the wife is away two weeks on a business trip, leaving Dad in charge of homework and eating and activities and injuries and whatever else might come up…

I will remember this next time I pick a project manager. First do the job you ask others to do, so you know what you’re asking of them, and how to measure their effort and result. And how to help them do it.

Each kid brings home a planner now. Each different. … Continue Reading

Worlds collide. The component builder (me) and the artist (with paint-stained fingers) look eye-to-eye at this over one long night.

Flash CMS. How is it done? How can it be done? How make a Flash site that extends to more and more of the same over time? As your client-list grows, say, and you have more of your best work to showcase, as does your client.

My artist shows me a beautiful Flash website done in NYC. She and I lived and worked in Manhattan for years, but she has gone to … Continue Reading

A fine Flash artist asks:

Can I script her site so that clients can make minor adjustments without her?

Well, how minor?

Like the changes they want again and again during development. One pic in place of another. Different wording in a blurb. Like that.

Yes, I say. The answer is always Yes. Yes, software can tie your shoe, if you invest enough. Then the question shifts. What would the client pay for that?

Make or break, says the Flash artist. They might never use this. But they might not … Continue Reading

My Kind of Linkage Box

The art people hand you a Fla with a dozen symbols that you want to manage with a single ActionScript class.  Now what was that trick Moock described?

The symbols are Frump1, Frump2, Frump3 and so on.  They do complex things.  Lots of ActionScript.

Frump1 could never be mistaken for Frump2 by the art people.  But to your ActionScript they do the same things.

You don’t want to repeat the ActionScript each time, copy and paste, copy and paste, Frump1, Frump2….   … Continue Reading