Case Studies
Posted by Elliot.
Gallery Design and Development
Aim:Design and development of Gallery templates. Gallery 85 design was based on an idea of an art gallery wall. Gallery 94 was to continue with a 3D theme from Gallery 73 but was to be a slicker design.
Specification:External loading of media and setup (via a simple.txt document). Sizing based on loaded images or SWF/FLV. Exports to SWF8+. To be used as a stand alone Flash gallery or to be incorporated into an existing Flash or HTML site.
Expertise:All the Flash development included behavior listeners for the animations, 3D distortions, and a naturally flowing OO structure. The designs were achieved with consultation with my Managing Director.
Aim:To design and develop a gallery template native to SWiSH Max2 and to use Object authoring for internal customisation. Quick turn around.
Specification:External loading of media and setup. Sizing based on loaded images or SWF/FLV. Exports to SWF9+. To be used as a stand alone Flash gallery or to be incorporated into a existing Flash or HTML site. Uses drop down menus with the parameters panel to set colours and to change the instance of the arrow graphic from a preset selection. Based on same structure as all of the new web site templates so it can be passed to other mid level designers to work from.
Expertise:All of the Flash Development. Feedback behavior listeners for the animations. Simple structure and procedural scripting. Object authoring. Component colour pickers built by another staff member. Five days to design, construct and 2 days of testing. Photo selection and design done by me.
Dynamic Web Site Design and Development
Aim:To build a 3D styled website and to reuse the 3D engine developed in Gallery 94. Interaction inspired by my iPod Touch. It also draws from ideas I have about spacial libraries, pages and information as part of a space. It is also an experiment in interaction as the pages can be dragged much like an iPhone/iPod Touch. Usability testing resulted in the addition of typical scrollers – something that a user identifies with page movement.
Specification:External loading of media, page styles and setup. Sizing based on loaded html text or jpg/ SWF/FLV, Exports to SWF9+. Uses a setup structure based in program and exports as a swf (to encourage use of the SWiSH Max2).
Expertise:All of the Flash design and development was done by me. Highly independent encapsulated object structure, (external page styles .swf can be tested separately). Listeners for the behavioural animations have call back functions to continue highly interactive animations. Spacial maths.
Note:All of the Galleries and Dynamic Web Site Templates here are solely designed and developed by me.
GUI Design for SWiSH Max2
Aim:To design and draw all new icons for all the buttons, toolbars and drawing tools. Continue theme set by SWiSH Studio2 and SWiSH Video 2. Increase usability and visual communication. Produce a more professional looking product.
Specifications:Limited palette bitmap using an index alpha colour for transparency. To work with the API of the new interface. Icons as multiple sized ico’s in the main colour palettes (XP, 24bit, 256 colour). Design had to be visually identifiable and communicate the function of that tool. Compatible across a legacy of Windows OS and Vista.
Expertise:Many hours of pixel by pixel drawing (reminds me of my Amiga500 and Deluxe Paint). Strict Colour palette process to insure same palette is used by the drawing application (in this case I used Fireworks) through to the final ico creation package (Axialis IconWorkshop 5.0). I would also compile my own test exe of the application (using appTranslator). Batch production method to ensure quality over many bitmaps and ico’s. Continuous testing and communication with application UI developers to work in with the API of the User Interface. Classic and strong visual communication concepts were used to tighten common sets of menu functions and their individual meaning. User testing and analysis.
Example: Please download a trial of SWiSH Max2 to view GUI design.
Samples for Launch of SWiSH Max2
Aim: To produce a physic based sample to show SWiSH Max2 physic class and as an advanced usage of actionscript2.
Expertise: Circular collisions scripting, vector velocities and simple collision detection.
Example: ballgame_physics.swi. Please download a trial of SWiSH Max2 to view the scripting. Use the Outline Panel to navigate through the structure and the Script Tab to view the coding.
To view more examples browse through swishzone.com especially the Dynamic Sites and Galleries.
Development of Elliotrock.com
Aim: To develop a site that draws the content from my blog. This is to be my ongoing personal site.
Specifications: AS3 developed showing a Command Pattern, RSS feed loading, Content structure is based on the RSS feed, expandable to use other page styles such as image/video galleries, easy to add other non section features such as a stand alone classic RSS feed reader.
Expertise: AS3 OOP Command Pattern, Namespaces, CSS in AS3, Wordpress, Yahoo pipes, RSS2 feeds, OOP coding and a simple crisp design.
The structure is using a Command Pattern that allows me to implement different menu executions off various menu items. The system is a Command List. The main use for this is having an implementation method that allows for flexible structure. I can add new menu functions and pages or function without having to rework a lot of code.
At first I pulled in the feed of my blogger page. The blogger feed is past through yahoo pipes, which is a rss feed aggregate of forms, except it offers a unique tool set to do many things with RSS and JSON feeds. Yahoo pipes has an open cross-domain-policy file setup so you can call this to enable loading to AS3 from their domain. This didn’t prove to be a stable solution as I was reliant upon pipes.yahoo and blogger, two nodes that I couldn’t manage. Pipes.yahoo.com had a critical bug that stopped rss feeds from blogger in their system, this made it clear that I need to host and manage as all the systems.
I decided to host my own Wordpress system on my domain on a new server. This has helped me concentrate on developing my AS3 blog system.