A Deviner’s Life

Let me just get to the point right away. No fancy little story, no boring little bla-bla.

At school I was given the assignment of creating a room in Flash that tells a story. One, and the most important, limitation was the fact that we were NOT allowed to use any Actionscript 3D libraries out there. No Papervision3D. No Away 3D. They wanted us to feel pain. We were forced to use the 2.5D capabilities of Flash Flayer 10. They’re not that bad… But I really really really (yes 3 times) prefer Papervision… And not only performance-wise.

I really put all my effort in this project and I am pretty positive about the result.

If you’re not interested in the story, feel free to stop reading and feel free to check out the site. You won’t miss anything important (I think…). (Oh btw: the site is in Dutch, but the content isn’t really that important )
If you do: (this is where the jump is )

A few of the limitations, or actually requirements, first:

• No Papervision3D, no Away3D, no nothing like that.
• The walls can’t be vector shapes imported from Illustrator, etc
• The room has to be rebuilt in Flash using 2.5D planes in Flash Player 10
• The user has to be able to navigate in the room. It be using pre-programmed animation paths, or interactive movements.
• The use of Flash Video (FLV/F4V) was important
• SWFAddress had to be implemented
• A Javascript powered sidebar in HTML allowing the visitor to rate the site and leave a message.

I might have missed some important ones… (which is probably a big problem since I’ve worked on this project for 6 weeks and only handed it in this morning… Either I never knew or they never told me…) Anyway: When I received the assignment, I immediately thought of this as some kind of ‘limitation-of-creativity’. Come on? No Papervision… In a 3D project…

I felt like a beast and I got boxed in a very small cage. And I wanted to run! I wanted to really get everything out of my system; I wanted to push the boundaries. Not only my skill set and my willpower, but also the possibilities of 2.5D. I wanted to express this in my project so I needed a room that actually is a room, and not an open space, and yet allows me to to whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want.

It’s then when it occurred to me: My ‘real’ room is exactly that. I live here, I am the boss here, and nobody can tell me not to do whatever it is I want to do here… So in a way it’s a ‘box’… But once I get in that ‘box’ I am free. Because here is where I live. Here is where my story, my life, lies.

But how do you tell a story? Without telling it?
Well I suck at storytelling and trying to make a point without actually making one, so after discussions with a few of my mentors, I decided to create a video blog in 3D 2.5D.

You can view 6 days of video blogging. Every day has it’s own preview, alpha movie and full movie.
The alpha movie is a difference close-up of the desk, where I spend most of my time.  It only shows you what changed during that whole recording.
The full shot shows you the actual timelapse of the complete room.

Controls:

• SPACEBAR: Go to next blog item
• R: Go to random blog item
• Drag mouse up/down the screen: Move forward/backward in z-space
• UP/DOWN: Move forward/backward in z-space

I could go into a few of the details of 2.5D (and it’s massive lack of stand-alone intelligence) and some ( read ‘lots of’) my findings  but I’ll do that some other time.

Final note: If you really want a good laugh: Check out the site in Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome first. They all work right away. I designed it in Firefox. Now check it in _any_ IE version.
What the hell, right?

Anyway: if you made it all the way down here: let me know and I shall honor you in my prayers (or something else)

Posts that somehow relate to this one:

• Doodling evolved – (1000 views)
• Survival of the fittest – (540 views)
• WebcamRelief – (782 views)
• Devine: Digital Media And Design – (10098 views)