http://www.themeworld.com Here’s a place you can go to to get free fonts and free desktops. Fonts are the best though. You can even upload your own font that you’ve created.

http://www.designmeltdown.com Great review site that categorizes sites based on Design, Color, Type, and Problems and Solutions. Very helpful if you’ve hit designer’s block and need some design inspiration that’s specific to the project. 

http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/dreamkitchen/ Imagine the movie The Matrix. Now imagine it as being interactive. Frozen time that you can then manipulate. Cool stuff.

Creating parallax (depth of field, usually with movement) is one of my favorite effects.  It gives a nice sense of space and allows you to draw your eye to certain areas.  What I like about this demo is the fact that I’m using video of a 3D object making the parallax even more convincing.  Notice how you can see the left side of the skull when your mouse is on the right side? Below is […]

You can embed an FLV and fairly easily control it using ActionScript. This example shows how, when your mouse is on the right side of the stage, the video plays forward, and when it’s on the left side, it plays backwards. Giving you a 3D look that’s interactive. Fun! View Example: http://www.designupdate.com/interactiveVideo.html Download Source: http://www.designupdate.com/interactiveVideo.zip

  I presented on After Effects and Flash today. Trying to cover both audiences and really showing the similarities in the products and how they can work together. It’s now an onDemand seminar that you can watch here. The source files I presented can be downloaded here. Flash: http://www.designupdate.com/fearfesttraining.zip After Effects: http://www.designupdate.com/footage.zip

In essence, if you’re trying to move two movieclips to perform depth then you can use setInterval along with getting the mouse position. In general I have one movieclip in the foreground, moving one way; and another moving the other direction. Here’s all the code, but you can also download an FLA here: http://www.designupdate.com/depth.zip //Get the center of the stage xStageCenter = Stage.width/2; /*—————————————————————- Functions —————————————————————-*/ this.scrollmyForeground = function():Void { // //distanceToTravel is the mouse […]

Download all the working flash (FLA) files here: http://www.designupdate.com/fearfest.zip Enjoy!

Want to know how to add a cue point to FLV files? Well, it’s fairly straightforward. The trickiest part is creating the listener object. Check out the code below, or download the source file here: http://www.designupdate.com/cuepoints.zip my_FLVPlybk.contentPath = “http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/video/water.flv”; //add 2 AS cue points my_FLVPlybk.addASCuePoint(2, “first”); my_FLVPlybk.addASCuePoint(4, “second”); //create a listener object var listenerObject:Object = new Object(); listenerObject.cuePoint = function(eventObject:Object):Void { trace(“Here’s the name of the instance, as well as the cue point: “+eventObject.info.name); //play […]

Going through my old files I’ve discovered a Flash file from 1997! Here’s the swf to prove it: https://paultrani.com/misc/OMNI.swf (I never said my first Flash file was any good!) Below is a screenshot of Flash 1.