Flashy

I finally got the courage to play with Adobe Flash CS4. Yesterday, I bravely opened the program which looked so foreign and the same time familiar while sitting on my chair glaring at it, clicking on every single button thinking I could figure it out on my own which resulted in total disappointment. I wouldn't say it was a total failure but definitely detrimental to my pride. After a few minutes of trying things on my own, I hesitantly opted to ask for help from the mighty Google and there it was (actually a few of them) - the tutorial. Subsequently, I watched a video and read maybe two or three "how to's." The video wasn't that helpful but having diagrams of the panels helped me remember how to do the most basic animation. I haven't touched Flash in a decade, so it looks a bit rough. I hope you enjoy my animation.

I had no idea this was extremely short; I'm going to do the next one a second longer (^_^)!

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?
~Pablo Picasso

Just Dance!

My colleagues and I were rehearsing a dance today for our presentation next week. It was so nice to see everyone enjoying themselves. It was such a riot, I wish I could post the video here. After they left, I decided to do a dance animation. I've always wanted to learn how to do animation in Photoshop and today I made my very first animated character. I know it looks rough and awkward but it was quite an achievement for me. It's been years since I've done anything remotely close to this. Since I've worked in print, I haven't had a chance to play around with other programs aside from Illustrator and Indesign. The only time I use Photoshop is to do color correction or crop an image. I thought it would me take me eons to learn this technique but it was surprisingly easy. I found this great link in YouTube for anyone who's interested in learning animation using Photoshop – it's very simple to follow. The music was an afterhought, I added it using Imovie. Hopefully, the next one will be a slight improvement than the first. I hope you enjoy this compendious movie.

I shouldn't post this after my animated dance video but I love this song and the animation is exceptional. I wish I could do this dance in the future. Enjoy!

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
~Vicki Baum