Zombie Killer Gorefest 3 - Flash Game

Date: 2nd April 2009 at 8:58 pm | Filed under: blog, flash, portfolio | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , , ,

zombie killer gorefest 3

I have been working on a couple of Flash games recently for my new arcade site zapgamez.com. The first of these games is Zombie Killer Gorefest 3, which is now previewing on Zap Gamez. You can play the game here:
http://www.zapgamez.com/games/action/zombie-killer-gorefest-3

The official release text for the game is as follows:

Currently exclusive to ZapGamez.com, Zombie Killer Gorefest 3 is a point and click shoot 'em up where you have to defeat the zombie hordes in 3 chilling action-packed levels. Inspired by 70's and 80's Horror and B-Movie genres, this game includes it's fair share of blood and gore, so is therefore not appropriate for younger players.

I created the game in actionscript 2, possibly one of my last as2 projects before I move over to as3 fully. The graphics and animation are a more prominent part of the game than the scripted aspects which are fairly basic hitTest functions.

The game will probably stay exclusive to Zap for the next couple of weeks before I release it through MochiAds distribution. If you are interested in getting the game for your site when it is released please subscribe to my RSS feed and I will announce the release here on my blog in the near future.

Leave a Comment

Growing Userbase for my Simplistix Theme for WordPress

Date: 12th February 2009 at 10:25 pm | Filed under: blog, themes, wordpress | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , ,

After releasing my WordPress theme Simplistix into the wild a few weeks ago I have been very happy, and somewhat surprised by it's popularity. It has received hundreds of downloads from my site and over 700 downloads from wordpress.org in the last 12 days. I knew that there was a niche for simple, text based blog themes as I had seen a few sites such as www.plaintxt.org that are entirely devoted to these type of themes. But, with all the sophisticated and complex wordpress themes on offer, Simplistix feels like quite a humble little theme — perhaps that's part of it's charm.

Anyway, seeing the download stats made me feel curious about who was using the theme. I had already seen it being used on a couple of blogs because, as with most wordpress projects, I had received some suggestions, ideas, support requests and constructive criticisms from members of the wordpress community. I did a bit of further research on google and instantly found loads more bloggers using my theme. The main thing that struck me was the diversity of subject matter that these blogs covered – science, computer programming, economics, movies, music, art, fashion and many more. It was also nice to see instances where people had modified the theme, adding in their own site headers, sidebar widgets, google advertising, etc.

I felt so inspired by seeing all these sites using Simplistix as their theme that I decided to write this post featuring some of my favourites. So here they are:

TOP PICKS

www.flyhypersonic.com – The seatbelt sign is illuminated
www.thewherewithal.org – Blogging about credit, debt, money, economy, theory
nicolasulloa.com/blog – Music, Animation, Graphic Arts and Illustration
www.ianthewebsite.com – If you could be any blog, what blog would you be?
2chicksblogging.com – Blogging for Change Training since 2008
feedingme.com
blog.nakedsteve.com – Oh hey is that a monome?

THE BEST OF THE REST

phoward.com/blog
ponasniekas.nespalvotas.lt
www.bigtechcenter.info
www.bletherskite.com
blog.xieer.com
www.bestmusiccenter.info
www.businesstechnologytimes.com/wordpress
likeitreallymatters.com
hasibul.info/blog

I am planning an update to the theme in the near future where I will add an options menu which will allow you to control colours, fonts etc.

Leave a Comment

Flash Tutorial - Adding an animated shine effect to your logo

Date: 12th February 2009 at 6:14 pm | Filed under: development, flash | Author: Sam Burdge | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This is a basic flash tutorial which explains how to apply an animated shine effect to a logo or image, as displayed in the example. This technique only really works well with colour logos.

You will need Flash 8 or above, as the effect utilises the filters which were a new addition in version 8. The source file for this project is available for download at the bottom of the tutorial.

Leave a comment if you find this useful!

GETTING STARTED

  1. Open a new flash document
  2. Go to 'File ->Import -> Import to Stage...' (or CTRL+R) and import your logo image.
  3. Move your logo to the top left corner of the stage (position 0,0)
  4. Go to 'Modify -> Document' (CTRL+J) and set your document's height and width to the height and width of your logo image. Set the framerate to 12fps.

CREATING THE SHINE

  1. Create a new layer above the logo layer for your shine
  2. In your new layer draw a white rectangle with no outlines (about 25ph high and the width of your logo)
  3. Select your rectangle and go to 'Modify -> Convert to Symbol' (F8) and choose 'Movie clip' as the symbol type, name it 'shine'.
  4. Double click on your new movieclip to open it, select the rectangle again and repeat step 4, converting it into another new Movie clip, but this time name it 'rectangle'.

ANIMATING THE SHINE

  1. Inside your 'shine' movie create a new keyframe at frame 25. This keyframe will be the point that your rectangle ends at after it has moved accross the logo. Frame 1 will be it's starting point.  See images opposite.
  2. Set the starting point for your rectangle on frame 1. Then go to frame 25 and move it to its ending point. You can also rotate your rectangle as I have done in the opposite example.
  3. Right click on the first keyframe in the timeline and select 'Create Motion Tween' from the dropdown menu.
  4. Press return to preview your animation
  5. You will notice that in my example I have added some blank keyframes to the timeline to add a couple of seconds pause between each shine.

flash-tutorial-1flash-tutorial-2

ADDING THE EFFECTS

  1. Select your 'rectangle' movie clip on frame 1 of the timeline, and open the filters properties ('Windows -> Properties -> Filters').
  2. Click on the plus symbol to add a new filter and select 'blur' from the list.
  3. Set the Blur X and Blur Y values to about 25, and set the quality to Medium. See opposite.
  4. Make sure the same values are set for the blur filter on frame 25.
  5. Go to Scene 1 of your flash project. Select your 'shine' movie clip and in the Properties panel change its Blend mode from 'Normal' to 'Overlay'

flash-tutorial-3

DOWNLOAD SOURCE FILE




6 Responses to “Flash Tutorial - Adding an animated shine effect to your logo”

  • Comment by vale
    Date: April 2nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Hi!
    I’ve been searching for such a tutorial for a long time!thank you!!
    I just wanted to ask if it’s possible to activate the effect on rollover with actionscript, it would be for a website!
    thank you very much,
    Valentina

  • Comment by Sam Burdge
    Date: April 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    Hi Valentina

    You could attach the effect to a button or movie clip rollover. You could attatch it to the rollover state of a button without any actionscript. You could also activate the rollover effect in as2 using the following method:
    1. Select the shine (Symbol 3) movieclip and give it the instance name ’shine’
    2. Add this action to frame 1 of the ’shine’ movie clip:
    stop();
    3. Create a button. you could make it transparent by setting it’s alpha to 0.
    4. Add this action to the button:
    on (rollOver) {
    shine.play();
    }

    I hope this helps.

    Sam

  • Comment by Valentina
    Date: April 8th, 2009 at 8:17 am

    Hi Sam and thank you very much for your infos. I am a newbie of flash and actionscript so I always need every step to be clear like in your tutorial to do it :)
    Could u help me out with a sample flash file?you could send it to my email if that’s not a problem for you.
    I would really like to understand both ways to make such a rollover button, love your tutorial!
    thank you very much,
    valentina

  • Comment by fatih
    Date: September 12th, 2010 at 9:46 am

    hey

    thanks for your sharing but. ı have some problem
    I downloand the .fla document but ı didnt open it with mocromedia flash 8 can you help what is he problem please ? ı am waiting your answer

  • Comment by Scott
    Date: October 19th, 2010 at 10:05 pm

    Well Done just what I was looking for!!!

    Thank You!!!

  • Comment by George Garchagudashvili
    Date: November 9th, 2010 at 9:18 pm

    Nice tutorial, also would be great if only as3 version will be posted :)

Leave a Comment

Classic Film & Animation - Jan Svankmajer - Food

Date: 10th March 2008 at 10:35 pm | Filed under: video | Author: Sam Burdge

This is one of my all time favourite animated films, Food by Jan Svankmajer. Here it is split into three parts - breakfast, lunch and dinner. Very surreal!

BREAKFAST


LUNCH


DINNER


About Jan Svankmajer: Wikipedia, IMDB

Leave a Comment

Classic film & animation - Len Lye

Date: 19th December 2007 at 1:35 am | Filed under: blog, video | Author: Sam Burdge

Here are a few of my favourite animations by Len Lye made for the G.P.O in the 1930's. His style of hand colouring and printing onto the actual film itself is still mimicked (digitaly) in adverts today. Remember these films were made before colour film existed.

TRADE TATTOO (1937)


A COLOUR BOX (1935)


RAINBOW DANCE (1936)


About Len Lye: Wikipedia, IMDB

Leave a Comment