Mocco

September 05 Installment: Flora

Customizable, flowery illustrations. Flora is a step back to my vectory roots, and an overdue re-born interest in what Flash can do.

About "Flora"

Flora was based on a single sketch inspired during my recent holiday. I was visiting my aunt and uncle in Langeland (just like last year), and a tiny image got stuck in my mind. I remember it as being either an illustration, or a painting on some wall. Whether I saw this image on the television in the evenings or elsewhere, I do not remember, and it doesn't matter. The tiny sketch I made displayed some highly stylized flowers, interconnected by thin lines.

Building the first mockup from this sketch was just like the "old days". Back then, we didn't care about usability or accessability. Back then I didn't even know the difference know what those words meant. But we did create some crazy things, and the community was great.

It seems I got too caught up in the patterns of the Old Ways, because the first mockup nicely illustrated one of the problems I wouldn't have cared about back then. People thought it was just a still image. The quick resolution was to add an animated introduction, displaying just how things work. How delicious to be able to do that; an animated introduction would be all but impossible in HTML. But this is not about Flash vs. HTML, that's discussed more interestingly elsewhere.

This is about rediscovering your roots, and I must say for the first time since awaiting Flash 6 (or MX), I'm now eagerly awaiting Flash 8, the Last of the Clan Macromedia. (Stay tuned for a 6th of September release!)

Next

Time is not my ally these days, and I do not know when I will get more of it. On the horizon, however, are wallpapers from Flora, and an source code release of the draggable dots used. It was based on code by Robert Penner anyway, so it only makes sense.

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September 05 Installment: Flora

13 responses to “September 05 Installment: Flora”

  2. I have no words for how cool this really is… the only comment I would have is that it would be great if we could ‘save’ our customizations to our desktops as High Res images.

    That would be hot. I hope you are going to write up something on how you accomplished this, and I am still waiting on high res versions of Stagecraft…. maybe a psd as well. I would love to see how you achieved some of the effects in Stagecraft.

  4. Thank you all. I really appreciate it.

    Chris,

    […] it would be great if we could ?save? our customizations to our desktops as High Res images

    “Stay Tuned!”

    But seriously, from what I read about Flash Player 8, it is possible to do exactly that. I might need to do a few tweaks here and there, but such a plan is definitely on the horizon!

    I hope you are going to write up something on how you accomplished this

    Definitely. I was thinking about releasing the open source version of this, especially since I’m already relying on free source code by Robert Penner — it’s only fair.

    […] and I am still waiting on high res versions of Stagecraft…. maybe a psd as well. I would love to see how you achieved some of the effects in Stagecraft.

    PSD first, high res later, that’s how I imagine I’ll solve it. I’ve already begun “re-cutting” some of my past installments in high res. For instance, Surrealisme is now available in a Surrealisme Recut version. From that and to wallpapers, there’s still a little work, but most of all this needs a proper section powered by a proper photo gallery CMS. Hence my recent research in that subject! So you see it’s quite a mouthful, but trust me, I have things planned out in my head 🙂

    John,

    Appreciate that a lot. Joshua Davis has always impressed me. With regards to Keith Peters, I found Bit 101 — is that right? Very nice stuff in any case.

  9. I like these very much. I especially like how you’re using more interactivity within the installments. I remember on the February Installment, Intermezzo, that it reminded me of an overunning actionscript project.. and this installment does, even more so!

    Ah, the joys of curveTo() hey! 🙂

    I stuck a bit of inertia on my experiments…