FLASH :: FLEX :: ILLUSTRATION :: ANIMATION
Box of Sox built using Ansca Corona – taterboy
June 25th, 2009 | Filed under: General Info, iPhone
The gig is up. All those who thought I was really smart for building Box of Sox with xCode now know the truth. Box of Sox and tapDots were built with Corona, not the beer, but an iPhone SDK from Ansca Mobile.
Corona uses a scripting language that is very similar to actionScript, javascript, and php to access the iPhone’s APIs and build applications. As a Flash developer working with Corona was so familiar, I had my first prototype built in less than a day. The best part is my brain did not meltdown like it does trying figure out xCode/Objective C programming.
Ansca is officially announcing Corona and it’s early adopter program this week at the HOW Conference in Austin Texas and will give a live demo on Friday in a session called “iPhone Development for Designers”. They will be joined by our own Sean Carey and Joseph Desetto to talk about the production process used to build Box of Sox.
To find out more about Corona, sign up for the early adopter program and download the SDK, check out their website here.
You can follow some of the up to date happening at the HOW Conference here and here
Ansca is making big news with the Corona SDK from Forbes and Information Week.
Information Week also quoted Trae Regan, another HDI guy, on trying out Ansca. He is a PHP/Database programmer and had his first iPhone prototype, pulling and parsing xml from the web, in a couple hours. Like many of us, Trae has spent numerous hours on xCode/Objective C tutorials with a nice collection of tutorial samples to show for it. Contrast that with a few hours spent with Corona, he was able to build a unique working prototype for a new application from scratch.
AS3-101: Introduction to Events – taterboy
June 14th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 101, Flash, Flex, Tutorials
ActionScript 3 101: Introduction to Events and the WooHoo Application.
Events are the most important concept to understand in ActionScript. After all, you can not have an interactive application without detecting user input. The new Event system in AS3 is much more powerful and consistent than in AS2, but it may seem like it requires a lot more lines of code. This is a very basic introduction to ActionScript 3 that demonstrates how to use Events and provides some tips for handling many events with less code.
1:Events - Hello World Application:
To build an interactive application we need to offer the user some components to interact with, once an interaction occurs, we need to reward them.
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Some Sketches and Illustrations Summer 2009 – taterboy
June 1st, 2009 | Filed under: General Info
Some of you may be aware, I know I bring it up all the time, that I began my career as an illustrator. With all of the programming and UI stuff, it could be months between having opportunities to pick up a pencil. So my sketchbooks are filled with notes, website grids and UI diagrams instead of drawings. I am trying to find time to do more sketching, like in high school, I may not pick the best places to start sketching, but the point is to find time to practice.
There have not been very many graphics on the blog, so I hope to balance things with a few sketches and illustrations from the last year or two. They are just sketches, but it is cool to see some of the different styles and subjects.
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Blog Outages Should Be Fixed – taterboy
May 27th, 2009 | Filed under: General Info
We have had some blog outages over the last few days. I apologize, we should be back up and running strong and hopefully a little faster even.
Thanks for you patients and understanding.
UPDATE
I guess I spoke too soon, had another outage this morning. The good thing is it was unrealted to the other outages and it seems to be working now. Hopefully.
iPhone Watch, May 2009 – taterboy
May 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: iPhone
The month of April was a busy month, you may have noticed the lack of posts. It was not because I was slacking off. This week we launched our second iPhone game with a company called reallyMedia.
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Export SWFObject code directly from Flash and Flex – taterboy
May 16th, 2009 | Filed under: Flash, Flex, Tips
SWFObject is the standard for embedding swfs into your webpages. In Flash CS4 the javascript embed code and plug-in detection has been combined into one file. This is easier then keeping track of extra javascript files, but not an easy way to transfer all that embed code to your web site.
SWFObject has provided a great AIR app for producing the embed code, it is very handy and the easiest way to produce the required embed code. I wanted to make this process even easier, so I created a couple template files that will embed your swf with swfobject directly from Flash or FLex. This is an update to a previous post, Exporting SWF Files With Custom HTML Templates.
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HDflix an AS2 FLV Player For Custom Skins – taterboy
May 10th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Design, Flash, Free Components/Classes, Tips, Video
There are many video players and player skins available online, but it can take hours to build something completely custom. Here is an AS2 FLV player that can make creating completely custom Flash video players a lot easier. HDflix is a fully functional player, but allows you to assign your own artwork to the player controls. This is not skinning an existing component, it is creating artwork, then assigning the artwork pieces to each control. Once a control is assigned, rollovers, button state events and control functions are automatically applied to your artwork.
See the Readme file and demo below.
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Using Filters In Flex – taterboy
April 6th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 3, Flex, Tutorials
Flash developers have been using filters on MovieClips since Flash 8. Filters in Flex it is not as easy as using Flashes Filters property panel, but they are available. Many samples show how to create filters using pure ActionScript, but these samples use good old mxml and I think are a lot easier to use. Filters can be used on most DisplayObjects and dynamic text.
There are 6 other filters that are not contained in this demo:
- ColorMatrixFilter
- ConvolutionFilter
- DisplacementMapFilter
- EffectTargetFilter
- GradientBevelFilter
- GradientGlowFilter
Happy April Fools Day – taterboy
March 31st, 2009 | Filed under: Flash, General Info
If you came to the site any other way then www.taterboy.com. Click the link below to see our sad attempt at humor.
April Fools Day Link
Have a fun day and be careful.
Update:
To see the prank, click Read More.
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Photoshop Tips Though the Years – taterboy
March 28th, 2009 | Filed under: Design, Digital Art, Photoshop, Tips
Can you believe Photoshop is almost 20 years old? It was initially distributed as scanner software by a company called BarneyScan in 1988 and Adobe officially released Photoshop 1.0 in 1990. A tear comes to my eye as I think about all we have been through and how much Photoshop has evolved over the years. “Our baby is all grown up! sniff, sniff.” With each new release came new features, some highly anticipated while others I still wonder what they are used for. As an artist though, is it really about the features? The art is created inside you, we use the photoshop as a tool to express our creations to the world. It was just a lot more barebones back then. I guess this is my version of the famous story, “Walking To School Barefooted, Uphill Both Ways”. That’s right, when I was a young man, we didn’t have a Navigator Palette and all those fancy Layer Effects. We still made art, and it was good. So, what if our our monitors only had 8 bit color at 640 x 480 resolution. That’s what it means to be old school! (Not to take anything away from all those really old school individuals who endured 1bit color.)
I started using Photoshop at version 2.5, though I have not adopted all the features that have come out over the years, I have learned a few things. I remember scoffing when Layer Styles appeared in version 6, everything new just seemed to be focused on filters and effects. I can do a perfectly good drop shadow from scratch, I thought; maybe even faster then it took someone to open the Layer Styles palette and enter in their settings. I did come around though and appreciate how all the styles are non destructive and adjustable.
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- @aminamat Tiger Army-Misfits/Bad Religion w/ hot western twang, RX Bandits-ska, Swingin Utters-like violent femmes, Unwritten Law-Rock/Puck 06/29/09 02:59pm
- Box of Sox built using Ansca Corona http://tinyurl.com/mkwrhg 06/25/09 03:09pm
- AS3-101: Introduction to Events http://tinyurl.com/mapj7v 06/15/09 05:17am
- Illustrator CS4: 1 Make gradient, 2 Select a grad. Slider, 3 Use colorPicker + Shift. Color applies to grad. Slider, is this New? 06/03/09 01:27pm
- Some Sketches and Illustrations Summer 2009 http://tinyurl.com/lmgeob 06/01/09 03:05pm