ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns » OOP for Artists

OOP for Artists: Using a Client Class

William B. Sanders — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:33:47 +0000

Here is another introductory video for artists and beginning OOPers. I was almost finished with it when the other one went up this morning. This one covers using other classes (besides ones in the Library) for making things happen. The Client class is often part of a Design Pattern, but you can do a lot with a Client class on its own, making requests from other classes. Click the download button to go to the download site.

OOP for Artists: Classes from Graphics

William B. Sanders — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:26:28 +0000

I don’t want to bore everyone with the trials and tribulations I’ve been going through with the technical problems I’ve had with Adobe Premier CS4, Snow Leopard and the new QuickTime screen sharing feature, but I think I’ve got them solved. For some reason the .mov files generated with QT screen sharing work fine with Adobe Media Encoder CS4 (AME), but if I put the QT files into Premier and export them to AME, they cannot be processed. Who’s the culprit? I have no idea—Colonel Mustard in the Library with the candlestick, perhaps. Anyway, one of our readers, Patrick, suggested Camtasia, and since I’ve been lusting after that application for years, I thought I’d give it whirl. Apparently, they now have a reasonably priced version for the Mac, and it’s lived up to its billing. Still, though, I have to get used to it, and these first several videos may leave something to be desired. Reader feedback is always valuable for fine tuning these things.

A New Look

The Outraged Angel logo may have struck some as a bit whiney, and so I changed our OOP for Artists (OOPA) logo to something a bit more positive. When you see it, you’ll know it’s a new video covering a topic in the title.

Each video will remain short—about 5-7 minutes, and the zip files will contain both the F4V file that can be viewed in full screen in Adobe Media Player and the associated ActionScript files. These posts will be very short on this blog because all of the content will be in the video. If you’re thinking of a topic for this series, keep in mind that these are for beginning OOP developer/designers and will cover one topic only. Use the Comment section of the OOP for Artists posts for comments on what you’d like to see.

Finally, keep in mind that this blog is for design patterns and more advanced ActionScript 3.0 topics. The OOP for Artists series is to help artists and animators (or begining developers) get over the initial OOP hump. The longer more advanced design pattern topics will continue to dominate the space on the blog. We hope this introductory series will help readers to get to the level of these more advanced topics.

OOPA Button Mini-Contest

Here’s the winning button submitted by Thomas Gorence from Orlando, Florida:

Tom’s button added a point to the Golden Lunch Bucket World Cup series along with the appropriate recognition. You have until October 1, 2009 to get in your entry. Send it to wdsanders@comcast.net and we’ll use the one that best fits this series.

OOP for Artists: The Empowerment of ActionScript 3.0

William B. Sanders — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:26:18 +0000

In a recent post I voiced my admiration for artists, designers and animators but noted that they seem to have been left out in the cold with ActionScript 3.0. I added a little helper statement not in the ActionScript 3.0 documentation—MovieClip.addFrameScript(). The idea was to encourage artists not to be too hasty in giving up on coding altogether.

Quite frankly, I was surprised by the number of comments we received on that post. I didn’t think artists bothered with our kind of discussions, and was more than a little gratified to find that some of our readers identified with the issues discussed. So I started thinking about a series of posts for helping artists.

I didn’t want to do a “dumbed down” ActionScript 3.0 for artists; so I opted for an approach that would cover the same principles that we’ve discussed throughout the life of this blog. However, I would move more deliberately and touch more bases—especially the basics of OOP. Further, I decided to use video and take advantage of the new Quicktime Player that comes with Screen Sharing. So, I created a simple class to start things off, and put it in an .f4v file (H.264 format) and you can download it by clicking the download button:

You will need an Adobe Media Player that is free to download. I did not include any .fla files because I’d have to put in at least two because some have CS3 and others CS4; so you’ll have to use your own .fla files. Each video is short and will play full screen using the Adobe Media Player. The only thing I need is feedback to let me know whether this kind of thing is helpful or not. I will be focusing on graphics and loading graphics, but I welcome ideas from one and all.