Lately, I have been pushing myself to do more and more of my Flash Projects using Actionscript 3.0. I know I am a bit behind climbing aboard, but learning new stuff is (I must admit) kinda scary. I am a designer by trade, but am not too afraid to learn new things. I try to keep up on the necessary technologies for my industry.

Now that the at least Flash Player 9 penetration is used in most browsers, corporations are more willing to publish AS3 code. This has been true for a little while now, but some companies are difficult to convince that the adoption rate for the newer players has exponentially gotten quicker and quicker. Now there are simply no more excuses not to learn the new technology; I simply must learn it.

I have been converting some Actionscript 2.0 code I wrote three years ago to parse through an XML file display the hundreds of products a user can choose from to order. The order is sent through a form using LoadVars. That experience was such a great learning experience for me that it boosted my confidence to continue forth learning more and more Actionscript. AS3 does such a better job at parsing XML. It is so fast and easy to use. Instead of iterating through each of the Child Nodes of the XML Object, you can access them directly using dot syntax. This makes working with XML a breeze.

The learning curve for AS3 has been a little bitt of a challenge, but coming from a good base knowledge of AS2 has made it easier. Some designers have come up to me and asked if they should learn AS2 or just jump right into learning AS3. I am a little torn on the issue because I feel that AS2 was easier to learn the simple things such as button interaction and URL linking. Yet soon AS2 will be a thing of the past and they will eventually have to learn AS3 anyway. They are different enough that it is almost like learning a new language, although simple programming concepts are the same such as loops and setting variables.

I love an article by Collin Mook published on O’Reilly InsideRIA titled "The Charges against ActionScript 3.0." It really nails many of the issues I was having with AS3. The biggest challenge I was running into was with his number 3, "Casting DisplayObject.parent makes controlling movie clips hard." This is so true. Why wouldn't the player be able to recognize what type of Display Object it is, it should be implicit and already know, because it is a child of the parent. Parents should tell their Children about their ancestors (it is important to the Chinese) it should be the case for the Flash Player. You would think type casting would help with this, but it doesn't. To reference a parent you need to specify its type. For example, if it is a Sprite use: Sprite(parent). If it is a custom class even based on a Sprite you need to state the Class Type: MyCustomClass(parent). For backing up two levels the Class Type you need to reference is the one that is two levels back. Within the comments one writer wrote that he teaches his students not to even use parent at all in writing a program. I'm not sure how this could be done, unless everything resided in one Class. What would be the purpose of multiple classes then?

I will continually push forward on my AS3 skills and am confident that it will pay off in the long run. I am tying to stay ahead of the curve. I don't know how designers that use Flash, HTML, and other such technologies can survive without understanding the capabilities out there they can design for. They are only hurting their own designs buy limiting their knowledge of the limitless possibilities yet to be discovered through technologies. I am a creator. I know no limits.

I have had a bit of extra time lately to dabble around with the Wacom tablet (6" x 8"). This is something I have been wanting to do for a while now, and just never had the opportunity to do it. Well, finally one became available at work, so I jumped on the chance to see how good it works. I must say not too shabby for my first time even picking up a Wacom pen.

When I first picked up the pen I quickly realized that painting everything at 100% opacity with the airbrush simply was not going to work. The main benefit behind the Wacom pen is that it senses how hard you press and changes the opacity accordingly, but if you start out will full pressure, it is more difficult to back-off from that pressure and not be able to blend colors together in the desired way. With a little patience and a few extra strokes, good results start to emerge.

Someone paid me a complement when I was accused of scanning in the image and manipulating it that way. They said that they have used the Wacom Tablet before and have never been able to get it to look that good. It does help to have a background in art. I do admit that I did borrow the image from an Addias Ad, but for reference only. It allowed me to get proper proportions and such.

Once I was able to transfer the proportions accurately, I went in and added the details with the brush. I enjoyed experimenting with different textures in the cloth and grass. The grass was fun as it came to life creating it with an almost scratch-board technique. With the benefit of Photoshop's different blending modes on the airbrush (Vivid Light in particular) I was able to easily pull the light out of the grass and add the convincing highlights. More experimentation helped me discover how to push the shadows deeper, carving the shapes to life.

The skin-tones and texture I found to be a bit of a challenge, but hey it was my first time using the tablet; give me a bit of a break. If I had even more time I could push the picture a little, further, but I think I am satisfied with my first attempt at this exercise.