Flash Animation

[suttree]

Is this hard? I am paying consultants thousand to put together timelines where the text pops out, and then goes away when you click it. It scrolls horizontally. I have a sneaking suspicion an 8 year-old could do this, and that I am getting *** raped.

Any of y'all program this? Any resources for learning it quick and dirty? Any starving students want to do it for beer?

 

[Rusk]

I have no idea how hard it is, but my brother is a graphic designer and his company made him go take a class in flash animation.

It was a pretty lengthy class. And he is still learning alot of it. So I guess it can be pretty complicated.

The Homestarrunner.com guys make it look pretty easy. They crank out a short cartoon every week.

 

[linux]

I took a small class about a year ago, I do not know your technical proficiency but it was quite easy. I have been meaning to go back and relearn it. If I were to pay it would be for the artistic eye that I lack.

 

[suttree]

My deal is really basic. I wonder if there is a flash for dummies book.

 

[Hobbes]

thousands? Stupid. It is that easy. Look at Swish if you want scrolling text.

 

[wherzwaldo]

In reply to:

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[dustin_c1]

The thing about web development is that by the time you know it well enough to pump it out quickly, you can charge an arm and a leg for your services.

You can go a quick'n'dirty route or hire someone on the cheap and be very satisfied with what you get provided that what you want is within the limitations of what your cheap developer can do or what the tutorials you find show you how to do. Seriously, you can do a google search and get a million neat tutorials that are easy to follow and that just work. When you begin to want to do things that are outside of what the tutorial shows you how to do, you'll hit a brick wall and end up spending so much time it won't be worth it. Cheap labor will either not be able to do it or take much longer than you (and often they) ever anticipated to do it.

If you choose to do it yourself keep in mind that design work, which is completely separate from development, is difficult. Seemingly the smallest things - like choosing a font, a color scheme, and creating button graphics are incredibly difficult and will take time. It will take an absurd amount of time to get something that is professional looking (I learned this from doing gaming websites as a hobby) until, or unless, you have some experience in design.

You may be satisfied with something done on the cheap. And you could very well be getting ripped off. Then again, you may regret ever considering going cheap or trying to do it yourself and you could be getting a fair deal. PM me with a link to the work. I should be able to tell.

From a programmer's perspective, it's a ******* nightmare. Actionscript and flash are inferior in every way to Java applets. It's just absurd. Many library functions don't work as documented. Others still have obscure and irritating limitations. Some libraries are so poor that you have to effectively rewrite them to make them useful.

 

[Ring1]

I'm a graphic designer, and my company is paying me to take a Flash class next week. It's 3 days, and I'm assuming it's going to be pretty simple.

Sounds like you don't want to do it yourself, though, just get someone cheaper. Everything's negotiable, but cheaper isn't always good.

When I first went out on my own, I knew nothing about web development and needed some work done. So I hired a cheaper guy that a friend had worked with. He was the stereotypical computer guy- looked like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, or Peter Jackson without the fashion sense. To make a long story short, he proved to be impossible to work with because he just didn't get that this was a "business". He wanted to play Everquest all day, spend an hour doing coding and then go to the mall. He never returned calls, missed deadlines and was generally unprofessional. In the end, I fired him and went another route.

Point is, sometimes you are paying for the professionalism when you hire a consultant to do stuff like this. You can probably find someone cheaper or go the starving student route. But would it be worth it if you miss one deadline and your rep is on the line?

Renegotiate if you need to- or find a cheaper resource. But I would stay away from the "hey, I know a guy who'll do it for $100" scenario.

 

[suttree]

I have a sample timeline I paid for. I wonder if I could hack it and just change the words and dates, and just use it as a template for other cases? What do I need, the software?

 

[dustin_c1]

Yeah you just need the software. Doing something simple like changing text will be very straightforward.

Next question is: do you own the copyright, or do they? If they own the copyright and licensed it out to you, you may not be entitled to redistribute a modified version.


Also the software is expensive.

$499 for Flash MX 2004
$699 for Flash MX 2004 professional