Flash on the Beach, Brighton - Day 1
Flash on the Beach, Brighton, England.
Day 1 - Monday 29th September 2008.
Flash on the Beach is the premier Flash conference in Europe. Nearly
50 of the world’s most talented designers, developers, creatives, film
makers and artists presenting on 3 tracks over 3 full days. Flash on
the Beach has brought together the most creative, technical,
entertaining, inspirational, awe-inspiring and educational speakers in
the rich media industry. The Flash bit of the title is more of a
mentality than just a software product.
Early start today, although needn’t have been too concerned, as
registration was quite quick, and the first session started about 20
minutes late. The skies started to clear up just as we (myself and my
colleague Hiro) went our seperate ways into the halls, Consequently
the attendees and our presenter, Marco Casario of comtaste.com, had to cut
short his demonstration on what is, and how to create,
a Mash-up widget with Adobe Air. Essentially, this widget is a desktop
application for aggregating data from public sources / APIs, such as
flickr and Yahoo! maps. Various code libraries and resources for
creating this can be found here .
Next up was Dr. Woohoo (Drew Trujillo to his mum) and his
In The Mod tool for Colour Analytics, ‘a site which
analyses and finds colour relationships in bitmap images, and allows their export to Creative Suite apps’. This was shown as it was developed into various personal and commercial projects. Again, quite a technical session, but a good balance of theory and practice.
Then it was time for a spot of lunch. Fish and chips in sight (just)
of the sea, before heading back for the afternoon sessions.
Next up was an informative session by Geoff Stearns, Flash Engineer at YouTube and the author of SWFObject, now the de-facto standard for embedding Flash content. An overview of the issues related to developing SWFObject and YouTube, current and future developments (such as captioning, a customisable or ‘chromeless’ player for other peoples’ sites, and annotations) as well a few funny clips (natch):
- Deathmetal Dog
- A man getting inside a balloon (yes, really)
- and the Mario theme played with a remote control car and bottles.
More about Geoff and his work can be found here.
The second afternoon session, by photographer Chris Orwig, was far less technical, and barely mentioned Flash. Despite trying to resist the Californian sensibility he seems to embody, I found myself quite inspired by his words and work, showing ‘out-takes’ and re-touching, but also using quotes from both writers and photographers to clearly get his point across. You can find out more at chrisorwig.com (which includes some assignments for willing attendees) - but the two best pieces of advice were to rely on your ideas - not expensive equipment - to get a good shot and never to tell a subject to smile.
The final formal session of the day was by Erik Natzke. Erik talked us through the processes he has developed for creating his artwork. A lot of coding and learning to produce what look like abstract expressionist painting and is generated by Flash. Again, a good balance of tech and inspirational show & tell.
Erik finished at 5, which gave us a bit of time for a beer on the pier and a bite to eat before heading
back to the Dome for the evening’s Inspiration session (accompanied by a free drink). This was given by James Paterson, who learnt Flash to bring his madcap characters and sketchbook musings to life, and now works with other programmers, as well as musicians and dancers, to take his interactive illustrations to a wide audience. The extended trawl through his personal and commercial work was amusing, entertaining and enlightening. So much to see, so I suggest checking it out for yourself at presstube.com.
And if you’d like to see some photos from our adventures, you can, here.
Richard Gallon, Senior Interactive Designer
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