09.11.99
Flashy, Very Flashy
Sep 11 Sat (01 PM)
This week has just cruised on by. After working on Labor Day (ha!) Working till 10:00pm or Midnight the rest of the week, we got two projects to their final stages. One is a Flash-based promotional piece that I’ve been working on solo. The other is a web site for Nikon, which I put a lot of design work into.
The Flash piece has been incredibly educational. We adopted the project from a client after they ran into some problems with the original developers. So I didn’t get to do any of the design, but I’ve basically re-written the entire thing, putting new walls, floors and ceilings in a bad bilt building.
That’s a bit harsh, it wasn’t so much badly built as: A) Built by someone who was learing as they were developing it, and B) built by someone using Flash 3. Reason A explains why certain elements at the start of the movie are so strangely implemented, and why towards the end, there are some more elegent implementations, with more extensive use of objectification and componentized movies.
But there was still a number of changes to make including using a consistent set of Typefaces, optimizing the use of Library elements (reuse reuse reuse!) and more consistency int he navigation.
I like where the piece has gone and I’m proud at how far we’ve taken it, but it’s been difficult not having any one to talk to about the work. Transitions, scripting, etc. are all outside of the realm of what anyone else has worked with in Flash, so I’ve been a bit on my own except for a mailing list with a huge mail volume. (4 – 5 digest per day!)
I’m hoping this weekend I can relax a bit, take my mind off of the huge push that was last week, get my Fall Syllabus in shape and have a less stressful week coming up.
Oh did I mention the guy who we hired and then quit the next day, then we counter-offered and is still in negotiations? This is the guy that we needed just for his Flash skills, and to replace Eric who’s leaving for New York in November. I’m still so pissed about that. I hope it gets resolved soon.