Origins

My bro had shown me how to use Flash MX and I made a few little animations. (Still shocked my class). Then I made him an animation for his birthday and found it quite fun. I then heard of Newgrounds and submitted it, but was annoyed when it got blammed. So then I spent (what seemed like ages) on an animation, expecting to get a really good score. Blammed. I got really cross and left Flash for a while.

Then I saw a website that explained Actionscript quite well. I learnt from online tutorials and sixth months later released my first game, Def Beat. I was so chuffed when it passed. :)

..::first flash witnessed::..

I remember back in the day I saw on someones computer some Joe Cartoon stuff, and something with talking fish at a bar or some shit. I had no idea how they were made and was never conscious of a program called Flash and carried on with my mostly computer free existence.

Several years later my cousin built a computer for me out of good parts from old abandoned computers. Soon a friend of mine introduced me to Flash and what it was capable of, he told me to search for "the one ring" or whatever by LegendaryFrog, I thought it was an amazing thing and so I started making my own cartoons in Flash. Sometime later, another friend introduced me to fat-pie.com and Salad Fingers, a link on that site brought me to Newgrounds, and Newgrounds and I lived happily ever after.

The end.

Origins

Started using Flash MX 2004 because I wanted to do awesome animatungs like on the web, turned out I sucked so I started to learn AS - firstly by copying from tutorials and pretty much lieing to myself that I wrote it, now I'm fluent in AS2 and although I've hardly used 3 I think I'm fluent ;P

Point ?

There is none. Flash is great if you're a kid, and if you're an awesome animator (looks at Luis) and you can make actual money from Flash on a regular basis then great go for it.. but to me I want bigger things. I'll be heading towards a career in games development, and I'm incredibly grateful for the help Newgrounds gave me in achieving that goal :) We'll see how that goes though, eheh.

First Flash?

When I first got introduced to Flash, it was roughly around Flash MX which was in early 2005. I was currently 12 years old, and I was interested in the whole "animation" type of thing. I always wanted to work on something like a movie because I thought I could draw so good. And I thought it would of been so easily....

I was wrong. I forgot about late 2004, I downloaded a free trial version on my pop's computer but ended up deleting it since I had no idea what to do. Than in 2005, I took another go at it. I started off on a sprite tutorial which took me off the ground. I learned alot. It was pretty fun...

Uh, I don't know what else to say. -.- I'm just getting lazy now.

At 11/26/07 02:55 PM, liaaaam wrote: I'll be heading towards a career in games development, and I'm incredibly grateful for the help Newgrounds gave me in achieving that goal :) We'll see how that goes though, eheh.

Thats the beauty of it though. It's that its a springboard to finding your real interests... wether its flash or something else.. some animators pan out to being directors rather than animators.. i think ed skuddrer went that route, then theres others like synj who start as animators and then go on to be game artists.. or game programmers etc etc..

At 11/26/07 03:15 PM, Luis wrote: Thats the beauty of it though. It's that its a springboard to finding your real interests... wether its flash or something else.. some animators pan out to being directors rather than animators.. i think ed skuddrer went that route, then theres others like synj who start as animators and then go on to be game artists.. or game programmers etc etc..

I guess so. I still think Flash is cool - the ease at how you can make something cool, and if you look at Deltas stuff it shows complex stuff is possible.. it's just trying to ignore that mass of standard crap games that people make that make it seem Flash is a one trick pony :[

I think I'm gonna do a remake of Desert Bus tonight. For the hell of it.

At 11/26/07 03:35 PM, liaaaam wrote: I think I'm gonna do a remake of Desert Bus tonight. For the hell of it.

That link did not work at all..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Te ller%27s_Smoke_and_Mirrors#Desert_Bus

>_< Double post my ass. Double post my ass. Double post my ass.

Hmm what do I have to do to get this to work.. HUGGA BUGGA DE BOO POP DE BOO

At 11/26/07 03:15 PM, Luis wrote: Thats the beauty of it though. It's that its a springboard to finding your real interests... wether its flash or something else.. some animators pan out to being directors rather than animators.. i think ed skuddrer went that route, then theres others like synj who start as animators and then go on to be game artists.. or game programmers etc etc..

It can also help in school too. I know that programming games made me noticeably better at math and physics than If i just used those in school. Programming is a very logical process, and so are math and physics. All the practice programming before getting into higher level math probably helped me succeed in those classes, simply because I was so used to the logic and thinking skills that I developed through programming.

Beside that, I was forced to learn about trigonometry before I was taught it in school, and the same with vector math. It's funny, because I skipped a math course (Math 4, deals with precalculus, trig, matrices, and vectors) and took a summer course instead (which was just precalculus), i was never formally introduced to vector math, yet what I've learned about it through studying programming skills and playing around with flash, when we need to use vectors in AP physics I tend to be more fluent with them than the other two people in my class.

You youngins who are starting to program now, it will probably help you in higher maths and physics in the future. So don't feel afraid to learn advanced math on your own.

I wuv my math. I miss not taking a math class this year, my school doesn't offer any math higher than AP calculus, which I took last year, and none of the local colleges offer calculus 2 or other high maths as evening courses.

Oh and luis is going to call me a nerd for liking math, so as a pre-retort I'll call him a mexican for liking burritos and cheap labor.

At 11/26/07 03:35 PM, liaaaam wrote

I swear every time I see your name it has a different number of 'a's in it :P

Whoring my scripting out

Right, I'm strapped for cash and all my solo projects are ridiculously over-ambitious and going to take the best part of a year to complete. So, anyone want to hire out some freelance scripting work?

Conditions:

o Decent / passable standard of art
o Knows exactly what they want me to do - I'm not feeling like thinking for myself on a project that's not fully mine right now. I'd prefer a strict set of instructions from the start - not that I'm unsociable; I just prefer to be able to code in one big chunk without having to check what needs doing on MSN every five minutes
o Finishable before Christmas - I want to actually be able to afford people presents this year

A 50/50 sponsorship should be fine - less if it's particularly art-oriented or there's an audio artist to cut in. I'm not selling out - I just really really need the money, and for some reason every part time job in the area's been taken by psychic fellow students.

Let's just summarise - good scripter wanting work - if I don't know how to do specifically what you want then I'll have it worked out by the end of the week anyway. Reasonable pay request; need cash; will perform sexual favours if it comes to that.

Any takers?

At 11/26/07 03:15 PM, Luis wrote:
Thats the beauty of it though. It's that its a springboard to finding your real interests... wether its flash or something else.. some animators pan out to being directors rather than animators.. i think ed skuddrer went that route, then theres others like synj who start as animators and then go on to be game artists.. or game programmers etc etc..

It often works the other way around too. Flash for me is a hobby and it is inspired a lot by what i learn at architecture. Designing buildings taught me the importance of concept, spacial thinking, searching alternatives etc before i make something.
I love seeing movies from people who aren't primarily animators or designers. For example, the animations of people who go to movie academy have a very different focus and approach than the standard Disney animations. Or people who are photographers/ traditional painters might put the emphasis on other aspects. It usually results in more original work.
It's why i always rant in my reviews when people just animate empty content without even thinking what exactly they want to make...

At 11/26/07 03:47 PM, Paranoia wrote: ...will perform sexual favours...

Your place or mine

Macromedia Flash : 0rigins

I came on at the End of Flash 6. It was somewhere areound the end of 8th grade/my freshmen year.

At 11/26/07 05:01 PM, Radioactive24 wrote: Macromedia Flash : 0rigins

I came on at the End of Flash 6. It was somewhere areound the end of 8th grade/my freshmen year.

At your sigs "Why I hate McDonalds" thread

1. I work at McDonalds, so ssssh
2. That story was really unfunny. If you're gonna make something up, try harder
3. That had nothing to do with McDonalds. You could have pretended you were anywhere.

not off topic. !!.

At 11/26/07 05:22 PM, liaaaam wrote:

At 11/26/07 05:01 PM, Radioactive24 wrote: ....

At your sigs "Why I hate McDonalds" thread...

Holy moly liaaaam, watch out, radioactive is an internet bully, you best not be saying things like he's unfunny!

Flash Origins

I started out as kind of a split between liam and Rudy, with the brand new Flash MX 2004 at 11 going-on 12 years old. I animate and code, both pretty well - just haven't submitted much of anything worth watching yet.

Re: The ghost of Flashmas past
The earliest Flash movies I can remember seeing were the Michael Jackson Interviews on eGoyk (eBaum ripoff? Yes). I soon watched nearly every Flash movie on that site as I realised their filesizes were relatively small and so could be reasonably viewed over my 5kb/s internet connection.
When I first got broadband I discovered Neopets and would spend hours a day on it and get nowhere. I began to notice similarities in how the games and animations were made; they didn't lose quality when zoomed in, the characters seemed to be made of pieces which rotated and moved as opposed ot being drawn frame-by-frame. SO before I even knew about Flash I had the idea of vectors, symbols, and tweening.
A few years later one of my friends showed me an animation he was working on, and introduced me to Flash. He promptly lost interest in it.

The ghost of Flashmas present
Recently I'm in a bit of a rut Flash-wise (more of a gaping valley). I've got no inspiration and no motivation to do any work other than what I have to do for school. Flash is even starting to depress me slightly, as I'm having to use it for presentations in school as I never got the hang of PowerPoint, and I can't mix work and hobbies well and end up disliking both. Hopefully doing a few coauthoring bits and bobs should get me back into the swing of things.

The ghost of Flashmas future
I used to want a future in games design, especially simple arcade-style games like what's commonly in the Flash community, but recently I've become more interested in film and TV editing/filming, so I'm hoping to do something like that. I think once I'm out of school I won't be seeing much more of the developing-end of Flash, to me it only serves as something to do at home when I've nothing else. That's not to say that Flash is a waste of time, I just don't see it as being of much importance in my personal future.

First Flash Viewed

It was this. A buddy told me about it in school and soon I was on NG watching all the time.

Flash Origins

I got started after I moved last march/april. It was a lonely time because I had little friends in my new area, so I explored the possibility of making an interactive quiz game. Yeah, that project sucked, and I deleted it XD. Then I got more into animation and eventually kinda just fell in. I still don't put out much due to lack of drive and too many ideas to get all finished. And I suck at drawing... :S

Why Bother?

Because I'm incredibly determined to get a not-boring job. Like my dad. :P

First Flash

Well, I'm not sure what the first thing I ever saw was. Probably watching my brother and sister go on Homestarrunner.com back in 2002 or so. I started playing a lot of internet games soon after that, and I really wanted to start making some games of my own. I soon discovered Flash on my computer(2004 or so), probably thanks to my brother. I already knew that flash could be used to make animations and games, and figured that animations would be easier to start off with. I made some dumb 3-4 frame crap, mainly made by clicking the timeline randomly until different frames would appear and drawing with the line or shape tool, and somehow made something. The help section was no help whatsoever to me and I stopped after like a week. It wasn't until 2005 in which I discovered Newgrounds thanks to some guy I hate now. First thing I saw on there was probably Prowlies or The Maxwell Edison Story. I became inspired knowing that there was a place where flash could be made, and went back to Flash, read some tutorials that were actually helpful, and made hopelessly blammed sprite flashes until the following year.

</long boring story>

Re: First Flash
This first flash that I ever saw was Ocean Man by TommyLM.

First Animation
This is my first animation..I like going through my old animations. Its nice to see how much I've progressed :)

The first real animation I made was a little gif.

Right here.

..::pixar short films collection::..

I saw this DVD in the store the other day and I thought it would be pretty cool to see the evolution of one of the best 3-D computer animation outfits out there.

There are 13 short films ranging from some very humble beginnings to full blown additions to some of their feature movies. Some of them you may have seen in the theater or on their DVD's. There is some fantastic stuff in there. The changes over the years are astounding; if you look at the clumsy, puppet-like animation of the baby in the short "Tin Toy" and compare it to the less realistic looking, but far more expressive baby in "Jack-Jack Attack" you can see just how far they have come and marvel at the sheer amount of manpower it takes to make good 3D animation.

I do not intend to start the 3D vs 2D debate for the umpteenth time, I'm just wondering who has seen it and what you think.

At 11/26/07 09:15 PM, BlackmarketKraig wrote: ..::pixar short films collection::..

I always love those shorts that pixar makes when they collaborate with disney. Like with Ratatouille there was that alien short - "Lifted" I think.

Re: First Flash

I really couldn't say what my first flash was but I remember "The end of the world thing" on funny junk and that's my earliest memory of a flash animation (although I remember coming to newgrounds a few times)
started animating 4 going on 5 years ago, before I knew flash existed, in photoshop elements. I quickly maxed out the amount of frames and grew frustrated that I couldn't make anything more than w/e the maximum frame numbers are.

I didn't really have internet at the time but my friend googled and found flash. Saved up for a year working at a 6 buck an hour job selling snacks at our local baseball field till a friend that bought it let me install from his and use his serial. After learning that was illegal I figured I would buy it but found the miracle of student discount versions. Bought that with cash to spair.

I made a spherefight clone, then a generic skate movie neither of which I bothered to submit. I made the jump to 3d for about a half year but got frustrated with modeling and rigging which brought me back to 2d after making a couple of shorts (a few of which I still have). After I spent a good 3 months on a 3 minute cartoon, that I realized during the last scene made no sense after being greatly dissapointed with it being unitellgable I quickly decided against finishing it. I tried to learn coding from a friend who mirraculously seemed to understand the language. (Turns out all he did was copy and paste things) I discovered this partly through our first game and just erased his code and pieced together my own after studying a few tutorials (and also taking a fair bit =P ).
After creating another game (99% done) I realized I was only coding so I could animate so I stopped.
Which pretty much puts me where I am now.

First Animation

What was the first actual animation you ever made in Flash? If you still have it, link!
Here's mine, dated at something like December '05. Clearly, I am a programmer at heart.

My firt, first animation in flash.. i dont have in anymore '=)
But i found this one... which its the second :)
I used to animate in pivot before flash.... i had them on a cd.. but for some reason my computer only reads the music files innit now...

At 11/26/07 08:43 PM, DarkMana wrote: First Animation

Let me find some of my 2002 stuff

http://www.ngup.net/view/Scene%203,%20Ta ke%201.swf

That's the earliest I can care to look for right now, although it's not the oldest animation I made.
Naturally flash started off as animation for me, as it probably did for most people, but once I discovered how to make buttons I immediately discovered the possibility to make games. My first game I made is on my site for nostalgia, even though it's pretty bad. Fear my pre-pubescent voice.
http://www.glaielgames.com/playgame.php?
id=7

The version on my site was upgraded to AS2 when I made my site so I could add a preloader.

Anyway it was a funny game, and I burned copies to a disc and sold it to my friends, I think I sold about 5 copies for $5 a pop, and got one fan.... who wouldn't leave me alone about pigeon pooper for the next like 3 years. I didn't even know the kid. Anyway I had no idea about the inner workings of variables at the time, the only flash reference I had was a book called "flash 4 magic", which showed how to make animations and extremely simple games, and I didn't understand any of flash 4's overly complicated code.

So I still used flash, but it was all button games or crappy animations which I thought were gold at the time. My animation style hasn't improved much since.

Anyway I ordered a cheap program out of the school's book order catalogue, I think I was still 12 or 13 at the time. It was a visual program for making games, which I picked up fairly quickly. It had some simple things you could do, and taught the basics of variables, which was the first time they were introduced to me. Rather quickly, I make a simple millipede clone. I loved that program and I made a little platformer after that. However it had severe limitations. You couldn't loop sound for one, and animation was near impossible to do in it. Also, every sprite snapped to a grid, so there could be no smooth movement. And the games could only be run by that program.

I thought to myself "If flash had variables, then I could make some sick games with it." So I looked back at flash as a means for game development, did a tiny bit of research and found out that flash did indeed have variables. This was one of the first times that I started using the internet as a resource. I quickly picked up how to code with variables and made some small games, then made a huge sequel to pigeon pooper, which while bad by todays standards was a huge accomplishment for me at the time. It's fun to play through, because it took me so long to make that you can see improvement in the code as you progress through the game. Doing homing objects turned from moving in diagonals in the beginning of the game to moving directly towards the pigeon at the end, and bosses and their AI were improved too. It was a feat for me.
http://www.glaielgames.com/playgame.php?
id=6
Mind the still squeaky voice, I just spliced the word "number" into the original recording.

And after that, I just kept making small games as a hobby until I decided to make a website to showcase them, where I went back and pulled out my best games and added a preloader to the. By 2004 my site was up and running. I kept making small games, when I decided that I needed to advertise more. So I began submitting my games to various websites, and none took any. Which is why I was very surprised to find that on Newgrounds (a site that I vaguely remembered watching some movies on that people sent me links too), my game instantly popped up in their "portal". Seeing it get 800 views in just a few hours was amazing, and reading the reviews was really cool too. The first game I submitted here passed with a 2.8ish score (I regret deleting that entry a while ago), which I had no sense of weather that was good or not (I did not know what a blam was at the time), but I was happy over it, and getting a frontpage soon became a large goal for me.

I worked hard on my next game, blockslide, and while it did get a daily 4th, it never got a frontpage. Around then I started getting involved in the forums, and made my first collab, inspired by the 5 shades of series, and the fact that all collabs I had previously seen were movies and not games. It did well, but again no front page.

Next came magnetism, which I regard as my stepping stone to success. When I first submitted the magnetism demo, I was really surprised at the score it got. Jumping from getting 3.5s on my submissions to getting over a 4 was a shock, I didn't think the magnetism demo would do that well, especially for a demo. That motivated me to finish up the final game, which scored over a 4 again, and was a huge accomplishment for me, cause it got frontpage.

I haven't had any milestone games since, unless you count magnetism 2 as being my first sponsored game. That was neat, I guess, to get a large chunk of money, and it obviously provided a bit of future motivation for me, but it was still just a hobby. I've just spent my time improving my skills, practicing, and enjoying my hobby, which will eventually become my career.

It's funny how everyone else here says that newgrounds was their motivation to start. For me, newgrounds was a motivation to improve, because by the time I discovered it I already had enough skill to pass a submission, and was really only submitting to advertise my site. Yet it's fairly obvious to me that newgrounds was what caused me to step my programming skills up a notch. For 3 years I was making relatively simple, amateur coded games, yet right after my first submission to newgrounds, the quality of my games took a jump (from Deep Space Wars (GG only) to blockslide to magnetism, those 3 games were relatively close to each other in time scale, yet there's a HUGE difference between the first (pre-newgrounds) and the 2nd/3rd (post-newgrounds).

For all of you talking about your origins, here's another topic for you. What was your "flash turning point", as in what caused you to bring your animations/games to the next level?

jesus crap i just wrote a huge post....

i must have been pretty bored for the past hour....

At 11/26/07 09:47 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

When is this coming out on paperback?

At 11/26/07 10:04 PM, jmtb02 wrote:

At 11/26/07 09:47 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

When is this coming out on paperback?

someone loves himself.

At 11/26/07 09:47 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: me me me

Number one worst seller of 2060, Tyler Glaiel's Autobiography.

At 11/26/07 09:47 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: For all of you talking about your origins, here's another topic for you. What was your "flash turning point", as in what caused you to bring your animations/games to the next level?

I dont believe in a turning point... you dont wake up one day and decide you wont be blammed anymore.. its a natural progression that happens. one that happens without noticing until years later when a topic is made on a flash forum and you can jizz about your past accomplishments.

On a more serious note, if there was ever a turning point on my time on this site in general it was when i started dealing collaborative work... it made me realize how much more satisfying it is to cross the finish the line with somebody / somebodies... yea its nice to be e-famous and have people throwing themselves on you (i suppose)... but its cooler in my opinion to have been part of someone elses growth.. or two have locked creative forces with other people in the scene. All the contests and sponsorships make shit too competitive these days.. theres plenty of money out there, theres no need to slash someone elses throat for it.