My first try at Flash...Ever.

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:09 pm

I used Swish, and it was easy...Never could understand Flash, though. Superh inspired me to actually try to use it.

Here's what I came up with. A love song for my old lady. Had to make it a projector file (which increased the size considerably) because the SWF doesn't stay in synch.

http://extremeryno.psychopuffs.com/TLW.exe

Strap · Post by **Strap** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:12 pm

Cute.

I suggest converting the jpg (or whatever picture file it is) of the guy to vector art. Not only does it load faster, it looks much sharper too.

make him blink every now and then.

MorGan · Post by **MorGan** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 7:11 am

HEHE. Nice one. What is this song? Its great!

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 7:32 am

Actually, the guy is converted to vector. The file size is because it's a projector file. The SWF version is 200KB with the entire song.

The song, by the way, is True Love Ways by Buddy Holly. My favorite musician.

Gimp Mask · Post by **Gimp Mask** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:50 am

how come the mouth is :O when he's singing "A"?

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:17 pm

Because.

I'm gonna try a program called FlashAMP and see how that helps me. It's supposed to be a wiz at Lip Synching.

Insane-Lark · Post by **Insane-Lark** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:38 pm

That's cute. It does need some work synching up but Buddy Holly is always a good choice.

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:48 pm

I've got all his songs memorized..I can even sing them on key and in pitch. Won a few Karaoke contests with Peggy Sue and You Don't Matter Anymore.

This song is kind of "our" song....A previous gal and I had "Poison" by Alice Cooper as our song. I've come a long way.

It's damn near impossible to synch words with speech, especially from a song in Flash. When it playes 100% in synch in Flash, the exported file is way off. So you've gotta go word by word and extract the file each time. That makes it really hard because you can't see where the word is supposed to go..Just gotta guess. You can tell that at the last verse, I was just really lazy.

SuperH · Post by **SuperH** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:31 pm

What you need to do - set the song as "stream" instead of event in flash. You'll need to keep everything together on a single timeline then, but when it starts to get off synch while playing it skips frames to catch up. Event is more flexible, it'll keep playing even if you stop the timeline, but steam is what you need to use if you want to synch anything to sound.

Pretty hot, but needs more going on or something, then again, if you're happy with it don't mess with it?

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:19 pm

I didn't want to get too burned out on my first time to use Flash...I truely dislike this program.

Swish is so much easier to get into..Maybe I'm just used to it..I can do a lot more a lot faster with Swish. Don't need to know Action Script, Tweening, or anything...Just point, click, and go.

SuperH · Post by **SuperH** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 1:24 am

I started off with swish too. It worked great, but eventually you'll get to the point that you'll want to do something you can't do with swish, or you'll realize that it's just about the least size effictient that it could possibly be. Once you learn flash, you're set, it isn't hard, just a little more tedious than swish, but at the same time wackily more powerful.

Trying to animate someone's mouth to match a song IS pretty ambitious for a first try at flash though, i might say. Making anything match sound is pretty much a pain in the ass.

ExtremeDrinker · Post by **ExtremeDrinker** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 2:38 am

I thought it would be really easy when I started. Good thing I have no ego, otherwise my lack of skill would bother me some.

I'm gonna keep practicing...I've got a person I'm going to try to make walk.