Flash Project

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Artist Statement

For my animation project I have created an interactive Family Tree. I got this idea because I want an easy way to keep track of and keep in touch with my family. Someday I hope to turn the project into a family website, but for now I’m keeping it simple and close to my parents.

I started by spending a lot of time on the phone with my parents asking about names, dates, and who is related to whom. Once I knew whom I was going to include in my family tree I tried to draw it on a piece of paper. Turns out families don’t really look like trees. It took a while before I came up with a style that looked good and made sense.

Once I had a solid sketch I sat down in front of the computer and copied the sketch onto Flash. I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to fill the tree in after I drew the outline. I eventually put the tree on Photoshop, filled it in on there, and took it off as a .psd file. Then, inspired by a flash project watched in digital media lab, I erased a small amount of the tree in the second frame, and then a little more on the third frame, and so on. Once I had erased the entire tree I reversed the frames and watched the tree grow.

I wanted the tree to have some life to it so I created a movie clip of a leaf blowing slightly in the wind. I spent hours trying to make it turn at the right point, and then I had mistakenly created a tween within a tween, so it was going too fast. After lots of help and time I eventually got the slow tween I wanted and added the movie clip all over the tree.

The buttons on the tree were a little tricky too. I made them grow in the over stage so the words are readable, but then some of the names overlapped or escaped the screen. I played with this for a while before I realized I could simply make the stage larger so see the names when they escaped the page. If I had the time I would make the tree a bit smaller and find a way to make the names readable without adjusting the stage size.

The profile frames were easy to make but consumed a lot of time. I couldn’t find the right type on Flash so I created all of the text on Photoshop then imported the file over, which didn’t always fit, so there was a lot of re-saving and re-importing. I had to compile pictures and information about people, some of whom I don’t know very well at all. I decided for the purpose of this project I will keep the profiles simple, but if I were to expand the project I would make the profiles more personal, and definitely include birth month and date, not just the year.

I kept the color scheme simple. I knew the tree was going to be brown, the leaves green, and then I experimented with the background until I realized a light yellow with spray painted yellows and oranges looked best. I wrote down the exact green and brown that I liked and copied these colors for the text and picture frame in the profile frames. Brown: 4F2509 Green: 07a507.

Finally, I added a forest ambiance to the project and the effect tied everything together beautifully.