Dr. Woohoo!

Continuing on the conference tour, thanks to Daniel Schutzsmith next up is the WDDC, aka Create Chaos ‘08 conference in Orlando, Florida on October 15th at 3:50 pm. With a focus on AIR/SWF Photoshop/Illustrator: What Happens When They Talk? we will explore the creative possibilities of two new tools in addition to the CS4 apps. I will also delve deeper into what the implications are for the textile/apparel, printing and publishing industries when we apply the rules of generative art/design with the tools we’re now able to create – in short, it’s time to redefine how we play this game. I hope to see you there.

Introducing… The Enraptured Cranberry Jellyfish from Tokyo from dr woohoo on Vimeo.

If you have the bandwidth, watch the hi-res version – you’ll be able to see all of the subtle details. The HD version is now available on Vimeo – Woohoo!

This animation was shown in public for the first time at Flash on the Beach. Although I was only there for the first day, FOTB again sets the highest standard of excellence when it comes to creative conferences and I sincerely appreciate all of the support from John and everyone at FOTB. I also appreciate all of the people that showed up for my show-n-tell session – I hope it was relevant to their interests.

 
The making of “The Enraptured Cranberry Jellyfish from Tokyo” from dr woohoo on Vimeo.

This video includes a behind the scenes view of what went into the creation of the animation. Not included in this video is the Audio amplitude analysis which was done in After Effects via a SWF Palette, exported and applied to the camera, particles and jellyfish via code in Maya. Stay tuned and I’ll have a lot more info on Adobe SwitchBoard, PatchPanel and more soon.

It’s hard to believe but it’s time for Flash on the Beach! I’m bringing my daughter this time, so I will only be at the conference for the day of my presentation because she doesn’t want to miss too much school. ;) 

I present on Monday at 11:30 am with a focus on transforming ideas-to-pixels-to-atoms. Following the flow of ideas-to-pixels and how my artwork comes to life on the screen, I will discuss two new Adobe tools that will make driving the CS3 & CS4 Creative Suites (CS) dramatically easier than previous methods. I will also explore automating Maya via code and integrating it with the CS apps. I’ll wrap things up with how-tos on different options for converting your pixels-to-atoms: using innovative printing techniques that allow you to print to any substrate from your inkjet printer, laser cutting/etching and more. 

Hope to see you there. 

Update: As a side note, for my early experiments driving the CS apps via code, I used ExtendScript ToolKit (ESTK) – as simple ExtendScripts (ES) to begin with and then with embedded swfs that could communicate through the ES. When Apple’s Leopard was released, Apple changed how the windows, including the swf palettes, redraw and this made swf palettes unusable in CS3 apps. Luckily, Adobe and specifically Michael Daumling and Bernd Paradies were already working on the follow-up to ESTK. With the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, it made perfect sense to combine some of the great technologies and out of that came Adobe SwitchBoard and PatchPanel. Both are SWC libraries for Flex Builder, the former allows an AIR app to communicate to the target CS app, the latter enables a swf palette/panel to communicate to the host CS app. SwitchBoard is available here and PatchPanel will be released at some point in the not-to-distant future.

I still recommend playing with ESTK because it’s easy to get up and running because the code feels like JavaScript and ActionScript 1 and it’s free if you have any CS3 app installed. Get to know the DOM (eg., in ESTK Help > Adobe Photoshop CS3 Object Library) of the CS app you’re interested in developing for and how to set/get different values, like the name of a layer.

Using ESTK is a simple stepping stone to developing AIR apps with Flex Builder and SwitchBoard – which brings the code up-to-date with current standards, such as strict data types, code hinting, etc. For all of the demos I did that involved AIR apps, I used Flex Builder and SwitchBoard exclusively, including the color apps for In The Mod. 

Hope this helps.