Next

This recruitment site for the high street clothing retail Next won an RBA Creative Award for Best Website and a Drum Award for best recruitment website in 2009. While the current site looks very different from the site as it was launched in 2009 it still retains many of the Flash elements and design decisions made during my time.

Flash, AS2, After Effects, Video production and post production.

Podland

This Flash site, was designed, animated and coded purely as an experiment is Flash development, all the motion was hand scripted, before the days of Tweener, Fuse or Greensock.

Experiments in the Gaia Framework

I’ve recently discovered the joys of the Gaia Framework for Flash. It’s an awe inspiring framework designed to allow Flash designers or developers to rapidly develop really complex applications very easily. One of the best things about it is an adherence to accepted best programming standards. An application built in Gaia kind of takes care of itself. My current project features hundreds of videos and pages. Gaia managed to make short work of organising them all into something that not only solved the problem but also kept everything neat and tidy. I could preload / cache / transition and bookmark, pages, video, content, elements, everything! It implements swfObject, swfFit, swfAddress and Greensock automatically putting every library you could need at your finger tips.
It also makes you think about how you could use it in other projects. It is just made for presentations.

Next time somebody asks me for a Powerpoint presentation done in Flash. I’ll be using the Gaia Framework.

If you were putting together a presentation in Gaia you could build your slides first and bring them all together before the client has time to approve them. Leaving you free to do the alterations rather than finding yourself torn between finishing the application and polishing the content.

One of the best features of Gaia is the XML Scaffolding feature. You write an XML schema describing your application, import the XML into the Gaia panel in the Flash IDE and press the button. Hey Presto! All your Flash files, AS3 classes, symbols, swf, pre loaders, AS imports etc, all get built automatically.

I’ve had a few issues with open Flash files crashing the Flash IDE during a Gaia export but this has never really bothered me. It just encourages me to avoid putting code on any timelines. It’s all open source and free to use. The support and documentation on the website are second to none. Steven Sacks has done an amazing job.

Specialist UK Restorations

Specialist UK Restorations are a successful building repair and restoration company in Ormskirk and Leeds. Aware that their industry has a reputation for fly-by-night operators, they were keen to put their workforce and premises front of house in this Joomla based media-rich website build.

Design, Joomla installation and administration. Flash elements, photography and video.

Total Brickwork Solutions

Joomla website and corporate branding for a successful Yorkshire based construction company. TBS want to make an impact when their new website is launched in the next few months.

Brand identity, Logo design, website design and build, Joomla installation and administration. Email administration.

Egniol

An HTML website built in Joomla! Featuring an animated drop down navigation system, context sensitive dynamic news modules and a Flash homepage element.

Photoshop design. Full Joomla installation and administration. CSS design and build.

Maya Deren

Today’s obsession will be over in less than 4 hours. “That’s I fad!” I hear you yell. Well, when I tell you that the entire career of experimental film maker Maya Deren is represented by 12 films made between 1943 and 1959 totalling just four hours of screen time you’d understand. I stumbled upon Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), quite by chance and I was blown away, not just by the film but by the on-screen presence of its star and director Maya Deren. A dancer, a poet, celebrated experimental filmmaker and feminist I had to wonder why I’d never heard of her before. Then again after soaking up The Witch’s Cradle (1943), At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) I suspect we’ve all heard of her, at least through the influence she clearly had on filmmakers and artists such as David Lynch and Kate Bush. It’s sad to think she died in 1961 when she was only 44.

Maya Deren