A lot of people asked us how we created the “10 things I can’t live without” short movie, so here is the basic story and how it unfolds.

We needed to create a new experience based on FlashEff 2.0, something that is different and would bring a new vibrant look to the product. We focused on the idea of presenting 10 physical things that most of you can’t live without. We made several attempts to find out which would be the most important 10 things, and finally we had those. Than, with a bit of creativity and as shown bellow, we did it.

Ingredients:
– Adobe Flash CS4
– FlashEff 2.0 (Premium Plus)
– Camtasia Studio
– Nikon D90 (for HD video, VR lens)
– Adobe After Effects CS4
– Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
– Mac & PC
– … (the secret ingredients)

1. First, after we got the idea, we had everything pictured in our heads and asked our sound engineer Alex to do the soundtrack for the movie. He understood very well what we needed and he managed to deliver the soundtrack in time and as we needed.

2. We shot 9 video clips (about 2 takes each). We wanted to edit each video clip separately and in the end to mix them on stage in Premiere. We made all clips black and white from the beginning.

3. We tracked a few points on each movie to be able to attach text to the filmed objects.

4. We created 9 flash animations for texts using the FlashEff 2.0 effects component. Than we captured them with Camtasia Studio and turn them into movies.

Sample flash movie

5. In After Effects, we got rid of the blue stage and turn that into a full transparent window. Than we mixed each of these flash movies with it’s corresponding video.

6. Finally after all these steps we have 9 clips that contain video, texts animated with FlashEff 2.0 and tracked into the video clips.

7. In the last stage we mixed all these clips together with the sound to make it feel more like a movie. There was a lot of stress and time used on the dubbing to get the sound synchronized.

8. We inserted a few blow-up blur in some places, a few other effects, and that was it. The movie was finished.

9. We spent about 200 hours on this project. This was just a side project since in the background the whole FlashEff 2.0 site and experience was developing.

The contest submissions are open till October 31st 2008, you are required to submit your patterns to dev[at]flasheff[dot]com before this date in order to get a chance to win $2500. (3 prizes available*)
Each winner will get $2000 cache and $500 in discount coupons to be spent on JumpeyeComponents.com

Also, all eligible submitted patterns will be instantly rewarded with a copy of FlashEff Premium Unlimited.
To get approved as eligible, each pattern have to meet the following rules:

1. You have to make sure it works correctly with FlashEff. Patterns that have functional issues will not be approved.
2. It is owned/developed by the same person/company that submits it.
3. The code should be open for us to evaluate.
4. No third party code should be used unless you have a written agreement that lets you use it.
5. You have to make sure it is not an illegal copy or a very similar approach as another pattern.
6. It should be submitted before October 31st 2008.

To select the best patterns from those that will be found eligible, we will evaluate each pattern by the following criteria: uniqueness, artistic look, visual quality, code quality and most of all: popularity. The final decision will be given by popularity, by vote. After October 31st we will publish all the submitted patterns as swf movies for people to choose between them and vote. The patterns earning the most votes will win.

*Up to 3 prizes are available as follows: Not more than 1 prize for each 10+ participants, 2 for 20+ and 3 for 30+. So, for example if only 10 participants have patterns that are eligible for the contest, only 1 prize will be given. One participant can win only one prize (even if he submits more patterns, this will indeed increase the chances to win)

Important! At least 1 but not more than 3 prizes will be given as stated above.

Download the FlashEff SDK here: http://flasheff.com/sdk/

Innovating the Flash world again – TxEff

The name says it all. It’s a text effect component for Flash that will change the way you look at text. It’s specially designed for Flash users and designers that want a quick and easy way of animating a text without any coding. The free basic component contains 3 patterns. The number of patterns doesn’t limit you because in each pattern you can try numerous params. As you will find out for yourself this will just open your appetite for more ways of animating.

TxEff website – a new approach

You don’t have to explore every possible combination of params, we want to help you enrich your number of effects, all you have to do is access the TxEff website http://www.txeff.com/. This is not only a website it’s practically an effect DataBase, on which every time a TxEff user discovers a new effect, he can share it with the rest of the TxEff comunity.

If you go online and see something you like just copy the effect Id and paste it in your Component Inspector and you will have the desired effects without having to think of them yourself.

Enter our TxEff community and get all the benefits that come with it.The component itself is very user friendly. All you have to do is to write the text, access the TxEff component and tweak the params to get the desired effect, drag and drop the effect on text and you have a fully animated text.

TxEff is the result of months of development and the feedback we got from our clients. We spent time thinking what our clients would want and offer them that special something. Everyone on the team came up with innovating ideas on how a text effect component should look and act. The result is a very user friendly, time saving component that doesn’t require any coding.

TxEff’s special offer, ends on December 31 2007

Get the full licensed TxEff which contains a minimum of 50 patterns by March 2008. We’re continuously developing new and complex patterns to suit your artistic need and all this for only $99.97(promotional offer).

There’s more, if buy it in December you will get MCTE for free, or if you have already purchased it, you can get it’s value in discount coupons.

Last week we finally launched the ActionScript 3 versions of our V3 components. So now, when you buy aV3 component, you get the AS2 and AS3 versions (AT THE SAME PRICE 🙂 ). The differences between the two versions of the same component are not so great. They consist mostly in the way the events and event listeners are used (the AS3 versions use the new method with an event class for each component and constants declared for each event). You can find more details about the new way of handling events in the documentation corresponding to each component. However, a few of the components, will also have new properties and methods (this is the case for the AS3 version of the Loader Pro V3 component, which has a new feature: reflection).

For each component, the documentation lists properties and methods used by both the AS2 and AS3 versions and, separately, new properties, methods and events used only by the AS3 version. We’re also working on the AS3 version of our tutorials, so, soon enough, we’ll have them available on the site. Further more, each component has on its page (“How to use” section) issues from our Knowledge Base regarding that particular component. For now, only the AS2 issues are available, but as soon as we translate those issues to AS3, we’ll make them available, too.

Regarding the trial versions of our AS3 components, we will release them only when the encryption software used by us will be available for ActionScript 3. So, now, if you plan to try out our components, you only have AS2 trial versions available (which won’t work in an ActionScript 3 project).

We are really glad that you (our clients) like our components and we hope that the new AS3 versions won’t let you down.