Flash Blobs

3 experimental videos created in Flash 4. I like blobism (cuz it's easy and it looks kewl) so I just started experimenting with ovals and "shape/movement 'tweens. Clips are seen in the order in which they were created. Once I animated everything in flash I saved each video to QuickTime movies for import into FinalCutPro for Export to videotape. This allows me continual smooth movement in the animation that would normally get slowed down in Flash because of the amount of data created by so many layers.

1)LAVA LAMP: Basically 4 layers over a background, designed as all these others to be a continuous loop.

2) ORGANISM: The next stage in complexity from the Lava Lamp experiment, turning a buncha blobs into a cohesive creature. The organism itself consists of 5 layers, the background was a photoshop creation (I use photoshop extensively). The tricky part was keeping the guts inside the skin of the critter. Lots of additional keyframes took care of that problem.

LAVENDER MISTS: My friend Bob Judd (ColonPal on YouTube, check 'im out!) who is a Flash genius, lamented to me that he couldn't find a way to do smoke in Flash. So I took up the challenge to at least create fog. I filled large ovals with a gradent tone that went from a semi-opaque white at the center to a 0% alpha on the edge. Enlarging the ovals further on three seperate layers, I then shape tweened them so they would undulate very slowly to create the illusion of 3D fog lazily rolling about. This is a trick for the Flash "purist". Otherwise, since then I've cheated and used photoshop in conjunction with flash to create very effective steam and smoke. Background is another photoshop painting.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• abdtract
• Flash4
• blobism
• surrealism
• experimental

[Jenokawa]

0:51 was awesome! I can't even do any of this stuff in flash 8 :( Great work.

In fact, 0:51 reminds me of Archie, from Watchmen :D

[BaronDixon]

You SHOULD be able to do it in Flash 8 if I could do it in Flash 4. Basically you just draw an oval then tug around on it to make it more blob-like. Do this in each keyframe, then just experiment with the color fills. You can make your own customized gradients. The shape tweens you insert will take care of the rest!

[Appledude500]

looks like lava lamp =))

[BaronDixon]

That was pretty much the inspiration for these experiments. I've always loved lava lamps since I was a child in the 1960's.

[SteelgunnerJin]

How did you do the blob organism blob? I mean how do you do shape and motion tween at the same time?

[BaronDixon]

That's actually easy. Change your shape on a new keyframe. there's an "Inspector" window at the bottom of your workspace. Select "Shape" from the Tween menu. Select a frame on your Shape layer between the two keyframes of your transformation and insert a motion tween. You should see an intermediate stage of your shape tween appear at that moment. Go to the newer keyframe and drag the shape to a new location. Play the scene.

[AlphaBlob]

cool

[BaronDixon]

Hey, if it gets the job done, it gets the job done. I'm the same way about out of date Photoshop.

[ConcorX]

Looks awsome for flash 4.

I use flash 5...Out of date flash users UNITE!!

[BaronDixon]

Ah, well....I wasn't going for realism anyway. The guts started morphing in and out of one another like that and I thought it looked kinda cool. So I settled for "coolism".