It’s feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only September when I spoke at Flash On The Beach.
There is now video evidence of my brief moment of stardom, currently residing on the front page of the FOTB site. I hate seeing myself on film, but fortunately the majority of the video consists of the artwork I showed (from my “Abandoned Art” Generative Art project), which is perhaps the only reason why, three months later, I can safely watch this without cringing.
Let’s be honest, Interactive Awards don’t mean shit. Unless they’re awards people have heard of, real people, not just people who are in the running for them. But the BAFTA in the UK, like the Oscar in the US, is pretty much universal currency, bring one of those home and there’s no explanation needed.
In 2003 BAFTA introduced a host of “Interactive BAFTAs”, a project I worked on was nominated for one in 2004, but they were quietly dropped in 2005 for reasons unknown. There still exist a few hotly contested Interactive awards buried within other events though, such as the Interactive category at the Children’s BAFTAs, which was last year won by my old company Littleloud. Tonight was a second Brighton triumph as Seb’s PlugIn Media posse landed the very same award for their excellent Big And Small site.
PlugIn walked it home really. I’ve never seen such a level of detail in a childrens game, it was a no brainer. If my four year old had been judging it he’d have gone for the same.
I had absolutely no part in this particular scoop but still I am feeling the joy, if only in the reflected glow upon Brighton’s Flash community. Happy days.
There’s also been a lot of extra-curricular (i.e. non-Flash) work this year, mostly Processing/Generative Art related. I’ve written a little about the “creative coding” book I’m currently writing (to be published in Summer 2010), but for fuller details of my Generative Art, my writing, and other more experimental work, you should visit my (award winning) personal blog here. Which is where, amongst other things, you can see a video of my work projected onto a Brighton church.
They say it is a good sign if you visit a freelancer’s website and they haven’t updated it in a long time, because it can be taken as an indication they are a) very busy, and b) so in demand they don’t feel the need to sell themselves too hard. Both these are probably true in my case, but still I carry this huge nagging guilt about my poor neglected portfolio, which now has approx 10-15 projects waiting to be added.
It clearly hasn’t effected the work flow anyway (which kinda makes me wonder if maybe I should just get rid of the portfolio entirely), but recently I have had some rather awkward questions from clients asking “so, what kind of work do you usually do”. If you looked at my portfolio, frozen in time in early 2008, you’d think my focus was eLearning. A year earlier it would have been games. But the correct answer is neither of these.
So, for the record, the kind of work I usually take on is probably best summed up as: “the meatier end of Flash”. Which these days usually means Flex, but not always. On anything else – industry sector, technologies, job size – I am usually without prejudice. Although, if you are an arms dealer wanting a Flash game about shooting Iraqis, don’t even waste an email.
Anyway, I’m not trying to hawk my wares here, just trying to preempt the questions. I’m pretty much booked up until xmas right now anyway, mostly due to my Generative Art Book. But that, is another area of work entirely …
Well, when I say “speaking”, I mean I’ve got three minutes! Which should be just enough time to get on stage, get my laptop hooked up to the projector, make sure it’s got sound, introduce myself, apologise for having no time left and get off.
I’ve been selected to present one of the Flash On The BeachElevator Pitches, twenty micro-sessions showcasing “hot new talent”. On first hearing of the idea I thought it would be impossible to fit anything meaningful into so short a time – when I spoke at Flash Brighton earlier in the year it ran to more like three hours. But, as Seb reminded me, this is more of a teaser trailer rather than a full feature, so I’ve now got something in mind (something new and previously unseen) which I hope will do the trick. I don’t think there’ll be time for questions though.
To get an idea of what you might expect, see my recent postings over at zenbullets.com. And if you’re at the conference please come and see me. You will be allowed 3.5 seconds in which to applaud.
Amongst the forthcoming Flash Brighton sessions in the calendar we have a talk on William Blake by Rich. This news prompted the following from Neil:
var bow = bringMe("burning gold");
var arrows = bringMe("desire");
var shield= bringMe();
var clouds = Clouds.unfold();
var chariot= bringMe("fire");
do {
mentalFight.cease = false
sword.sleep = false
} while (! England.pleasantpastures.isJerusalemBuild())
Makes sense. Flex is only the framework, Flash is the platform we are building for, whether we are using Flash or Flex. I was starting to feel a little odd referring to myself as one of Brighton’s Flash Developers when I hardly ever open Flash. Technically, seeing how 90% of my work over the last two years has been built using Flex Builder, I am probably better described as a Flex Developer these days. At least I don’t need to worry about such rubbish now.
Flash Builder (aka Flex 4) is expected to have a Beta release in June, with final release expected in the last quarter of 2009.
If you have any questions on the rebrand, there is an FAQ here.
as3.0 is like a strict german mistress. Very harsh but gets good results.
as2.0 is your stoner friend from college.
as1.0 is for script-kiddies, designers and other non-technical people
as2.0 is for girls
as3.0 is for real men
as3.0 is carefully crafted formulaic pop – predictable, slick, reliable, dull
as2.0 is glitchy electronica – some semblance of form, but playful with it
as1.0 is a child bashing saucepans – imprecise, messy, but lots of fun
as3.0 is a Japanese Chef’s knife. Finely crafted but requires care and technique in its use.
as2.0 is a Machete. Great for hacking things, but useless for anything requiring fine detail or control.
as1.0 is a plastic spoon.
Adobe have just released their latest Flash Player penetration stats, which suggest that Version 10 now has an approximate 75% penetration.
Flash Player 7
Flash Player 8
Flash Player 9
Flash Player 10
Mature Markets
99.3%
99.1%
98.9%
74.2%
US/Canada
99.2%
99.0%
98.8%
74.5%
Europe
99.1%
98.9%
98.6%
75.3%
Japan
99.8%
99.5%
99.3%
72.0%
Previously Adobe’s own stats tended to be taken with at least a soupcon of salt, as they were based on visitors to their own site (who would obviously be more inclined to be Flash users), but in now employing third party market research for these statistics we might take them a little more seriously.
For an alternative view RIAstats offers some visual data too, which also puts FP10 around the three-quarters mark. Interestingly, they also give stats for Silverlight, Microsoft’s much mocked “Flash Killer“, which is now showing an actually rather impressive 25% uptake. I have slightly warmed to Silverlight in recent months, mostly thanks to conversations with Ed at Unwrong. It may yet be one to watch.
Flex has been around a while now and is ramping up in terms of popularity. I had a handful of Flex projects last year, all of which were a positive experience, and I have more lined up for this year. But while Flex has been embraced quite happily by the Coders (mainly because it is the first decent ActionScript IDE) I’m not convinced it has penetrated our symbiotic co-species; the Designers.
For all Adobe’s claims about improving workflow with the use of Flex Builder, which it certainly has for writing code, I’m not sure the way of creating components and skins for Flex (which cannot be done easily without one of Adobe’s other products) is quite as instinctive. The reason I suspect this is because for every Flex project I have worked on we have had real difficulty finding a suitably skilled Designer.
One of the stigmas associated with Flex is that every Flex site you see on the web, looks like a Flex site. So many times you see the default loader, default buttons and even the default grey colour scheme, which suggests to me the Designers are nowhere to be seen on these projects.
So if you are a Flex Designer reading this, or a Flash Designer who isn’t scared off by Flex, please get in touch. Especially if you are in the Brighton or Birmingham area and are affordable. I have projects you can be helping me with right now.
And Adobe, listen up; Flex isn’t going to change the world until we can get the Designers on board. So perhaps you might want to make it a little easier for them to work with it.
There are only really two types of awards – those that your mom has heard of, and those that she hasn’t. And while I’m still really chuffed about the two DiMAS awards I accepted last week, this was slightly eclipsed last night by Littleloud, the company I used to work for, bringing home a BAFTA for their Bow Street Runner Flash interactive.
I had no involvement in it at all, but my friend and colleague Iestyn Lloyd lead the project, and almost had a breakdown because of it. It was simply not physically possible for one person to work any harder on a Flash project, so the kudos it has received since is very well deserved.
I had a piece of Director work nominated in the short-lived Interactive BAFTAs back in 2004, but it failed on the night, which was very disappointing. This is why, while I am extremely excited for the Littleloud crew, I’m also seeeeeeething with jealousy. Perhaps they’ll let me touch it next time I’m in.
While I have always been a proud member of the Flash Brighton group, I became even prouder on Thursday night when we, collectively, scooped a well deserved Strongest Community award at the 2008 DiMAS awards.
Inspired by the New York group FlashCodersNY, Flash Brighton (or FlashCodersBrighton, as we were originally called) started only two years ago, as a mailing list with a few irregular meetings, mostly kept alive by the enthusiasm of Seb Lee Delisle. But since then it has grown to almost 200 members, with regular weekly meetings attracting a consistent stream of quality speakers, initiating collaborative projects, transatlantic link-ups, big screen spectaculars, a one dayconference last year, and never, so far, charging a penny for any of it. But, most importantly, it has formed into a highly cohesive group of Flash professionals who like to work together and share their knowledge.
At the awards ceremony the group was commended on how much we had achieved in a short time and the potential of our relatively young collective. But what really stood out was how our presence had become felt not just in Brighton, but across the web.
As Rich pointed out, as well as the Community award, Flash Brighton’s members were all over the DiMAS like a rash this year, having contributed to works nominated in seven of the twelve categories . And I should add, with hopefully a sufficient amount of modesty, that I’m supremely chuffed to have come away with a second award that night too; winning this year’s Best Blog award for my writing on zenbullets.com. I won’t be giving up the day job quite yet though.
Processing, the Open Source visualisation language behind my abandonedart.org site, finally went “1.0″ yesterday (after approx 7 years in Beta). Full press release is here. Download is here.
I can’t recommend Processing enough – it’s very easy to pick up and a great way of sketching out ideas, even for non-programmers. And most of all, it puts the FUN back into coding. There’s oodles of source code on abandonedart.org if you are looking for a place to get started so go, splash around a little, you might like it.
When I started working as a Flash freelancer in Brighton I assumed the whole world and their wife were all out there doing the same thing too. But I have since come to realise that while there are plenty of freelance Flash professionals out there (not so many Flex Developers though), there are only a few whose ActionScript is worth their day rate. Also, the good ones tend to be booked up months ahead, so don’t have any particular need to advertise their talents.
So, for those of you who are looking for an ActionScript freelancer, below is my pick of the best of Brighton.
Naturally I’m putting myself at the top of the list, as I need your work just as much as anyone else. But if you have spoken to me and I am busy, or you owe me money, or you’ve taken offence to my haircut or something, try one of the other guys. My colleague Kris has a longer list here, but these are the people I will personally vouch for.
If you contact them do let them know you found them via me. Beer is very expensive in this town.
If it is a Flash Designer you are after, rather than an ActionScripter, they are much easier to come by. Your best bet may be to tap people randomly on the shoulder while wandering around Churchill Square. Roughly one in every five will be a Flash Designer.
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