New Site = www.mortonmetropolis.com

Posted: February 9th, 2010 | Author: Liza | Filed under: websites | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

This is a new site I worked on with Davo and James, Its built using Django for content management and Jquery for the transitions.  Its a small site but a nice one.  Check out the rollovers on the homepage and the artists detail and Gallery pages. www.mortonmetropolis.com.

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Diamond Showreel

Posted: February 2nd, 2010 | Author: Liza | Filed under: After Effects | Tags: , , | No Comments »

This is the latest showreel I have been working on for Diamond Advertising.  I was searching for ages to find a decent soundtrack, its weird how something like that can end up taking so long.  Thanks to Davo for suggesting Poison Lips by Vitalic, which I hadn’t heard before, I love it.


Embedding Foreign Characters in Dynamic XML text Box.

Posted: January 12th, 2010 | Author: Liza | Filed under: As3, Flash, XML, cs3 | Tags: , , , , , , , | No Comments »

I had a problem with a Russian font not appearing in a text area, although the font would work when I traced it.

The font was originally Avenir, but there was nothing appearing when I embedded the Cyrillic characters.

I tried to change it to Arial and still no luck.

The solution was changing the font to Arial Unicode and embedding the Cyrillic characters.

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Social Beacon Is No.4 in App Store Free UK downloads!

Posted: October 13th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: social beacon | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

WOW.. Incase you missed the Gadget Show last night, there was a feature on the social networking app I worked on with Ben Dodson and the Gadget Show Team.  It was awesome to see how they put the program together.

Social BeaconOver the past month they have had the Apps available to download, and by Day 3 we were in the top 20 Social Networking apps!.  But we were eclipsed by the Biker Blast Off app which sold over 1 Million in the US!, how crazy is that?.  They absolutely smashed us out of the park!.  None the less, today we are No.4 on the App store free UK downloads!, which is colossal!

Anyway have a look at the app store and download it.. its great fun and FREE!

Check out the Apps Episode HERE.

Download the app HERE!.


Supressing jpg options popup in Photoshop Batch Processing

Posted: October 4th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: cs4, photoshop | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

I rarely do Batch Processing, but I find it incredibly useful when I do.

I had an issue kick up where every time I batch processed images (just basically resized them and saved them again), a “jpg options” dialog box came up.

Jpg Dialog

So instead of Photoshop just batch processing 300 images I would have to sit here for every image and press “OK” for each, which kind of defeats the purpose.

The solution was to tick the “Override Action “Open” Commands” in the Automate area.

Automate

Also although I wanted to use the “save for web” options, It didnt seam to work and also kicked up the same error.  So I just used “Save As”. this technique worked for me anyway.


Depth Management in AS3 = Z Order

Posted: September 30th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: As3, Flash, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to move the depth of an object on the stage in AS3 today. Its actually called Z-order in AS3, not Depth. Instead of just using the AddChild function, which put the Movie Clip on the top of the display list, I used AddChildAt, which set the depth of the Movieclip while it was adding it.

So instead of adding the child this way:

global.base.bgSprite.addChild(whiteTriangle);

where the movieclip was just dumped on top of everything

I used this

global.base.bgSprite.addChildAt(whiteTriangle, 1);

The 1 moved the depth of the movieclip to the base.

p.s. this was an external ActionScript file.


Iphone Apps + The Gadget Show = AWESOME!

Posted: August 30th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: Uncategorized, cool stuff, iphone apps, photoshop | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

Last month I got a call from one of the producers from North One Television, asking weather I wanted to help out on developing an IPhone App for the Gadget Show.  They found me through my mate Ben who has developed an app before with Phillip Parr, a lovely little metal detector you can check out here.  I don’t even have an Iphone so the whole thing was a learning curve for me.

I developed the interface in Photoshop at the following sizes:

  • 320 x 460 pixels at 72 ppi - (when you hold the Iphone up to your screen this size will seem larger), this is because the actual iphone resolution is actually 163 ppi.
  • Its 480-by-320-pixels in to total but you need to minus the size of the header with the coverage and power status (-20 Pixels).
  • I exported all the images as high quality PNG’s.

So 2 Iphone apps were developed, Social Beacon and Biker Blast Off!.  Both equally awesome.  Here’s some more info:

Social Beacon:

socialbeacon

We worked on Social Beacon. The gadget show presenter, Jason Bradbury came up with the idea for a social networking tool which lets you create super quick status updates for leading social networks.  I have played it as a demo and it’s SWEET!, the status updates are so funny and really imaginative.

Biker Blast Off

bikerblastoff

Suzi Perry came up with Biker Blast-OFF!.  Its a bike jumping game where you’ll need to use every trick on your iphone to achieve a record breaking jump.  Developed by Media Tonic.

Both apps use the IPhone accelerometer feature and are available at the app store FOR FREE!!.


Plugging in External Classes to Gaia Framework Files

Posted: June 19th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: As3, Flash, gaia framework | Tags: , | No Comments »

I probably go on about Gaia Flash Framework, its mainly because that’s what I used to learn AS3 and I’m still figuring it out.

One of the main problems I have with it is plugging in external classes to the Gaia packages.

These are the basic steps to adding an external class, ill be updating this if I find any more issues.

1. Import the class to the main package import area.
2. Create individual private variables for any of the class instances or movie clips.
3. Instantiate the object in the constructor
4. Add the function to the list.

Also don’t forget to add any movie clips (and instances) onto the stage and create linkages in the library if necessary.

If you get a 1009 error its probably because you havnt published the project.


Accessing the stage in Gaia Framework

Posted: June 14th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: As3, Flash, Uncategorized, cs3, cs4 | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

I have had alot of trouble trying to access the stage from Gaia Framework, but thanks to David, I’m finally getting the hang of it.

I needed to access the stage width (when resized) to create a a bar to sit behind the navigation on my site.

First I had to add this to the class constructor:

addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage);

Then create the following 2 functions:

private function onAddedToStage(event:Event):void
{
removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage);
stage.addEventListener(Event.RESIZE, onResize);
onResize();
}

private function onResize(event:Event = null):void
{
navBackBar.width = stage.stageWidth;
navBackBar.x = 0 - ((stage.stageWidth - Gaia.api.getWidth()) / 2);
}

navBackBar is the name of the movieclip on the stage.  You can see it behind the navigation on my site.


5000: Error migrating from CS3 to CS4

Posted: June 14th, 2009 | Author: Liza | Filed under: As3, Flash, cs3, cs4 | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

I have moved more than 1 Gaia Framework file from Flash CS3 to CS4 and got this error.

5000: The class ‘Work’ must subclass ‘flash.display.MovieClip’ since it is linked to a library symbol of that type.

The solution is to import the MovieClip class into the import area and to extend the main class as a MovieClip.

In my case from this:

public class Logger
{

to this:

public class Logger extends MovieClip
{