Free sound loops and tutorials to help with projects

I thought it would be nice to have a few links listed that could help us all write the flash documents we need for this class. Everything I found is absolutely free provided it is not used commercially. There are plenty of sites with sound loops, but most of them ask you to register, or want some payment. But these are a few sites I found that provided free sound loops. The first one, Squidoo Music,actually had a great list of links to other sites with free sound loops. It has a link to Flashkit, which I had found earlier in my search. The sound loops on Flashkit can be previewed – not all sites have that option.

I really liked the music at Efiddler. It was all violin music -very nice. For some pretty offbeat music try Extreme Synth Weirdness Project. For a little eastern music try the samplings at Koan Flashzen.

Sound effects – I only found a couple of sites for free sound effects. A1 Free Sound effects has a number of good ones. Fonogeno is another good site to go to for sound effects.

Along the way I found that there are lots of great free sites with flash tutorials. I liked this site called KnowFlash. It had a nice whirling propeller video tutorial that showed how the actionscript worked. Entheos also had some free flash tutorials. As a site it was clear and easy to navigate.

Maybe one of these sites can help someone with a future assignment.

Juxinteractive / Studio Exploration

Juxtinteractive is a interactive marketing and design website. There are lots of different sites to explore on this site as well as updated news about the company, jobs, and live action videos. Inside the website I took a look at one site that I thought was absolutely ridiculous ) but in a good way. The title of the site is justforthefofit.com. Inside you can find tons of fun and interactive humored animation that will leave you wanting more. You can play games like fuse ball or just click a bunch of buttons and see what they do and who they affect on the screen. The website is put on by Fuse Television so it's mostly filled with different videos of bands that you can watch. There are lots of farting noises and singing melodies that are put into action once you click on a certain object or text area. The people who created this site obviously had a lot of fun.

*Bigspaceships and Horror Flicks*

The art design company I chose is bigspaceship.com. I'm not in love with their own site but they have designed many award winning flash sites that are really cool.

On their site I wished they would have kept the background either white or black consistently throughout. They have a few black backgrounds and then mostly white.
A nice feature on bigspaceship's site is the lab link. They have little classes online like how to optimize bitmapimages for flash, etc.Their navigation is a little disappointing to me. I don't like a bunch of new windows opening.

But let's move on to the cool stuff...

I love the site they did for the movie Grindhouse. http://www.grindhousemovie.net/They have done a lot of movie sites but I'm focusing on this one.The fuzzy, gritty feeling is haunting and nicely done. I like the way the lobby doors open into another scene.The target cursor that spurts blood and bullet holes is interesting.They have a create your own poster feature and scream machine that's fun and clever.I like the bloody loading symbol. It is all very artsy and I wish I would have designed it. For inspiration I highly recommend checking out all of the sites they have designed.

IntegralVision Design

IntegralVision http://www.integralvision.co.uk/ is a cutting edge web development company. They cover all aspects of design. There services include Website construction, Flash animation & multimedia, database development and E-commerce solutions. They make banner ads to complete interactive web sites using flash. There designers are experienced Flash game designers and often add in a unique flash game into there clients sites. They did some work for Dartmoor National Park and created a neat flash based game you can play right off your browser. They seem to prefer to stay simple in there designs, while still giving an artsy feel. http://www.dartmoor-npa.gov.uk/
IntegralVision has done work for various companies; with Coronado (a British board game) they took the game online using flash, and offered an interactive playing area where you can play against others online. http://www.cirondo.co.uk/
They also do interactive work, where you control where the website goes. In Grid magic, you control where in the house you want to go.

Spinlight Studio Artist/Studio Exploration

Spinlight Studio is a graphic and web design team that creates images and websites for clients. These websites range from product promotion to fan sites for rock bands. My favorite thing about Spinlight.com is the unique and fun navigation system. The red dice at the bottom of the page are numbered one through five, and correspond to the index on the bottom left. You can pick up those dice using your mouse and throw them around the screen, or drop them in the hole to load the corresponding page. In their portfolio, you can find a list and links to some of their products, some of them containing flash websites. The Ideas page describes the goal of the company, plus has some pieces of advice for the reader (including "Never trust a designer using a PC").



Finally, the Share page contains a forum (love the toilet paper image, by the way) and some entertaining games for when you get bored. Overall, I think this page is very professional in its presentation, but also uses the Flash to entertain its clients.

-Danielle

Studio/Artist Exploration

www.angryalien.com
artist : Jennifer Shiman, Cartoonist

She's a freelance artist for 2 years, a cartoonist/internet animator based in Los Angeles, California. She works full time creating Flash-animated shorts of bunnies who re-enact movies in 30 seconds.

What attracted me to her work was the humor on her animation with careful execution using Flash. Animations flow smoothly, like the ones you see on Cartoon Network. Very good use of scale and perspective. Very vibrant colors. There's also a lot of scene transitions. She also made most of her sound effects and voice recordings, it's really funny. The best part about her animations are the storyline. Fitting a whole movie in 30 seconds is tricky. I guess she only needed the key points of the film. Regardless how short her animation is, it has a beginning, middle and end. Overall, impressive short animations.



www.doorsoff.com/flash.html
Doors Off Flash Web Design Studio
artist : Andy Vincent

What attracted me to this site is its clean, easy navigation and simple design. Those design aspects are my basis of my own design most of the time. Animation transitions between pages are very simple and straight forward. It has enough animation to convey the message, yet not distract the viewers from the main purpose of the site. Color choice is very clean and very pleasing in the eyes, more like a relaxing mood. The fonts are very clean too, very legible and easy to read. Most of these design elements reflect very well on his projects. Very impressive portfolio. Concept is very clear in terms of the client's nature of business. Overall, the designs are professional-looking.

oh my flash!

At www.ohmyflash.com you can find great examples

of introductory flash pages.

This site shows excellent templates of

navigation menus,

photo galleries

movie clips

and wonderful flash effects,

It is worth to check some of them, they are fantastic.

In addition, they show prices of web design packages which are affordable.

From 500 dollars (five pages, static) to $5K,

that’s about 100 dollars/pages.

Miltos Manetas

Miltos Manetas is a contemporary artist living in Los Angeles; He is originally from Athens, Greece and received formal art training in Brera-Milan, Italy. Manetas canvas based artwork generally comprises oil-paintings of wires, game consoles, various cables, computer hardware, and sometimes people using them. He has had art exhibitions at both the New York based Gagosian Gallery in 2000 and the Yvon Lambert Gallery in 2006.

Miltos Manetas also has various Flash website base artworks such as his www.maninthedark.com, www.fourfortyfour.com, www.farewelltophilosophy.com, www.antonionegri.com. Manetas website art page www.JacksonPollock.org was mentioned as one of the 50 coolest websites by Time magazine in 2006. For the website www.JacksonPollock.org, Manetas incorporates the uses of Flash to mimic Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist style to allow the user to use their computer monitor and mouse to emulate the painting method of Jackson Pollock.

car websites: sexy

audi.com
R8 movie

Audi is a German car manufacturer; the only objective of their website is to sell cars. They provide information and media to consumers in order to create interest in their product. The main website has links to interactive flash movies for each model, which is a great way to differentiate each is a mix of still images, movies, and text. The movie can play in a linear direction or the user may skip around, which is fantastic for users.

The design is crisp, clean, organized, bold, sophisticated, and looks great. In a way, the design is the embodiment of a car; similar colors, lines, shape, and style is used. Every inch of every page looks classy and expensive. The layout is clear; you always know where you’re going and what you’ll find there. Every page is consistent, but the images and graphics make it unique enough to make them stand out. The text is always short, to the point, placed exactly where it should be, and grouped with like information. In the end, some of the movies are a little long, but the website draws you in and invites you to wait and see what’s next.

The TT movie is broken into sections; each section is a row of boxes and each box represents a screen. The navigation is basically a group of boxes aligned in rows, but it is clear what they represent and how to use the site. Between screens unique animations play, they visually lead you to the new screen and introduce the information. The screen isn’t immediately replaced with the one navigated to, which keeps the movie feel and adds sophistication. Face it, elegant animations leading you from one place to the next makes pages look primitive. This is a website that causes the pan on the stove to boil over and keeps you from picking up the kids on time.

The designers faced many challenges, but gracefully overcame. Primarily, there is a lot of information. The information is spread out over a number of pages, which keeps the user from being daunted by long paragraphs that, realistically, no one even skims. Some users may want to sit back and watch the movie and learn about the car while other users may be seeking the answer to a question. The main goal is to sell cars. Every page whispers that an Audi is a high quality car and it will fulfill all of your desires.


SUV advertisements show large families getting into cars with their luggage, dog, sports team, surfboards, and boat; they tell you that you need the car. Audi did not even attempt to take this route, which is practical agreement that no one needs their product. The script on their website is carefully manicured to keep you from being reminded that you should be comparison shopping. They do not tell you the miles per gallon gas rating, the trunk size, towing capacity, passenger room, or sound systems. Audi focuses on how well designed the car is, how beautiful it is, and what it is capable of. Overall, Audi does a wonderful job of marketing their product; few who leave their site aren’t daydreaming.

-----------------------------------------------------

lucasarts.com

Lucas Arts is a unique website that is fun for all ages, it is dedicated to the various video games that they make. The site very easy to navigate, you always know where you can click, where you’re going and what to expect there. All of the things you can click on light up and move, some also play sounds. The design is bright and colorful without being garish, color and size is used effectively to lead your eye.

On the Lego Star Wars pages, you can build a character by choosing a head, torso, legs, and a background. At a glance, the site doesn’t appear to have a lot of information, the pages are well organized, preventing information overload. As you visit pages, you earn things such as wallpapers, screensavers, chat icons, and videos, which is an interesting concept. The animations are cute, in theme, and encourage the user to play with the site and share it with friends, creating more interest in Lucas Arts’ games. Overall, the site is fun, interesting, informational, and well designed.

Studio/Artist Exploration

Although not traitionally a studio, Albino Blacksheep (ABS) is a popular forum for which amature flash animators and other multimedia enthusiasts alike come to exchange ideas, text files, image files, and of course movies for fun.

Founded in 1999 by Steven Lerner primarily for the sake of promoting his band of the same name. After taking web desinging classes Steven Lerner decided to redesign the entire website, and ever since it has gained popularity throughout the years. The most obvious aspects that ABS shows is its wide variety of amature flash animations, some of which are collaberations between numerous animators. A good number of resources that are used for these animations usually come from an open source such as Flashkit.com which is a great place for flash developrs to not only gather ideas and tools from but also things like sound effects, all of which are free to use.

Studio/Artist Exploration

Sunnyfalsh.com is one of the sites that I have found and it's not a studio,this site is related to a company which offers high quality and affordable pre-made flash templates that will add value to any web page.This company also build web pages for its customers and give some services such as:

• Custom Web Design & Web Development
• Ecommerce Web Site Design & Development
• Logo Design and Corporate Identity Design
• HTML Services
• Shopping Cart Integration
The interesting part about this site was looking at their flash templates.These templates are really attractive and interesting.When we open each template,we hear music and we could see short intro with different options.In above the page we can find a price of that template.I want to share some of the templates with you:
Design studio flash template.



I really like the part that we choose each option and the sound we hear when we choose.In my opinion,the way that each page go to another page is good and effective.I like the color which is a mixture of gray and other colors.The only problem for me was the music because it kept going and I became tired of listening.



Dogs club flash template









The next one is Dogs club.I really like the flash in this template.The bones,and the funny sounds.Usage of flash in this template is simple,but the fact that makes this template fun is its design and color.

Xml dynamic photo gallery flash template
Is another example which is a great example of using flash.This template is about a photo gallery and their portfolio,exhibitions,bio and contacts.
Music band flash template
This one is my most favorite one.The colors,the options ,specially the intro is great.The way that each page open and start is amazing.I really like this one.
......................................................................................................................................
I searched for agency.com.They create effective interactive marketing campaigns and world-class websites.
they have 7 beliefs in their work:
1.in a world of spiralling choices and mounting overload we believe in making the complex simple 2.in a world of product parity, low attention spans and bought loyalty we believe captivating experiences create affinity 3. in a world of decisions based on the briefest of encounters we believe every touch point matters 4. in a world of disjointed and fragmented communications we believe digital interactions must fit seamlessly into the customer experience 5. in a world propelled by incredible technology we believe human behavior is the hardest code to crack 6. in a world where customers demand perfection we believe delight leads to demand 7. in a world full of brands and their noise we believe it takes insight and imagination to stand out and win in an interactive world, you need an agency.com .
They have a lot of clients such as:T-Mobile,CNN.com,Visa,British Airways,eBay,Academy of art university.
If someone wants to contact them it could be happen by phone or e-mail.They have office in different cities.
About their services,they say that:
"Our work starts with the big picture. We get to the heart of your customer's experience with your brand: in the physical world and the interactive world. If these interactions are in harmony, your customer's journey is seamless and satisfying."
In their portfolio you can find 6 example of their work.Here are some examples:

British Airways I like this design specially the reflex of the words at the bottom.It's very soft and effective.


Hp music Again we can see that reflex of the words.I think this site is a great example of using flash and I think it's very well designed,effective and professional.