http://pixil.info Production workflow podcast Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:04:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Copyright © Pixil.info 2010 eckenruiz@gmail.com (Pixil.info) eckenruiz@gmail.com (Pixil.info) posts 1440 howto, productivity, workflow, design, development, photoshop, web, php, tutorials, reviews The Production Workflow Podcast Wersquo;re a group of passionate designers just like you. Wersquo;d like to share our ideas, thoughts, and techniques with you. Check out our tutorials videos on design, development and workflows. Pixil.info Pixil.info eckenruiz@gmail.com No clean http://pixil.info/wp-content/themes/pixil_new/images/podcast144.jpg http://pixil.info 144 144 http://pixil.info/downloads/how-to-build-xml-gallery-in-action-script-3/ http://pixil.info/downloads/how-to-build-xml-gallery-in-action-script-3/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:06:50 +0000 admin http://pixil.info/?p=244

Episode 21

This is going to a four part tutorial where I show you what XML is, what an Array is, How to load the XML into Flash, and some really cool effects using the Transition Manager.

]]> http://pixil.info/downloads/how-to-build-xml-gallery-in-action-script-3/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Episode 21 Watch Video Part 1Understanding XML Part 2 3Understanding Arrays/Loading XML into Flash Part 4Making Flash XML Slideshow Download Tutorial Files Coming up on today's episode: How to build an XML ... Episode 21 Watch Video Part 1Understanding XML Part 2 3Understanding Arrays/Loading XML into Flash Part 4Making Flash XML Slideshow Download Tutorial Files Coming up on today's episode: How to build an XML slide show gallery with Action Script 3. This is going to a four part tutorial where I show you what XML is, what an Array is, How to load the XML into Flash, and some really cool effects using the Transition Manager. Part One - Understanding XML If you have used HTML at all then you are ahead of the game. XML is very similar in the sense that every opening tag must have a closing tag. For Example here is a tag of strong around the word "Hello!rdquo; As for XML I have a tag of name around the word "Jermbordquo;. Or we can have a self closer like the image tag in HTML. I make a tag called name and give it an attribute of first with a value of "Jermbordquo;. Unlike HTML, XML allows you to create your naming convention. So use this to your advantage. Letrsquo;s say that you are making a user name XML. Use tags like #60;username#62;#60;password#62;#60;email#62;. Or photo gallery, you can use names like #60;nature#62;#60;city#62;#60;space#62;.. Use anything that makes sense to your project. Now there are a few "rulesrdquo; of XML that I want to point out. Every XML document MUST have a root node.XML is very case sensitive. It doesnrsquo;t matter if you use camel case, all lower case, or all caps just make sure you use them consistently. I recommend using camel case, I find it easier to read and use it in my style of writing. As first stated all tags must be closed. Either with a closing tag or a self closing tag.All tags must be properly nested. Meaning Opened and Closed in order. As an example I am using color tag and green tag and this illustrates the proper way of nesting your code. All attributes must be quoted! For the example that I am using, I want the path of my photo to be an attribute. On screen is an example of the right and wrong way of doing that. You must have a Doc Type Declaration. This helps avoid any confusion on the browsers part . If you open a new XML document in a program like DreamWeaver it will give you the doc type automatically. Other notable properties of XML is, like HTML you can leave comments. Comments are done the same way in XML and HTML.#60;!--comment example --#62; This is great for many reasons. One, you can comment code out if you donrsquo;t want it to render but might need it later. Or leave reminders for your self or other coders that might be looking at your code. Special Characters. There are a few "illegalrdquo; characters to be aware of. For example I make a tag for math and the value to a human reads 9 is less than 15. But that less then sign denotes the opening of a tag. This would break in almost every case. So if you want to render the value the way humans read it, then you need to use the "correct form". For this case its ampersand l t semicolon. There are a few more to note, so take a look at my cheat sheet for which characters are "illegalrdquo; and what their "correct formrdquo; is. So now that we got the basics of XML down, lets write a document that we can use to fuel our slide show. Letrsquo;s make a new XML doc and save it under the name of slideShow.xml. Go to line 2 and open the root node and call it slideShow. Go down a few lines and close the root node. Next letrsquo;s make a child of the root called photoList, and go down a few and close it, also, letrsquo;s give it an attribute of date with a value of Sept2009. Go ahead and make one more child, but this time put it in the photolist, and call it photo. This node is going to be a self closing node. Letrsquo;s give it 2 attributes, one called path the other called desc the abriation of description. And for the value of path put images/001.jpg and for desc put Title 1. Copy and paste the photo node six times and change the 2nd node to be 002,jpg and title 2 and the 3rd node t... Downloads,,Flash,,Tutorials Pixil.info clean No http://pixil.info/tutorials/animating-with-actionscript-2/ http://pixil.info/tutorials/animating-with-actionscript-2/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:15:07 +0000 PixilStaff http://pixil.info/?p=133

Episode 16

Right off the bat I make a new layer and I call it actions. It is always best practice to have your actions on its own layer without graphics. So I start every project off by adding an Actions layer and locking it.

]]> http://pixil.info/tutorials/animating-with-actionscript-2/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Episode 16 Watch Video Play NowStreaming Video YouTubeiPhone Video Tutorial Files Coming up on today's epsiode: Find out how to make simple animations in Flash CS4 using Action Script 2. Right off ... Episode 16 Watch Video Play NowStreaming Video YouTubeiPhone Video Tutorial Files Coming up on today's epsiode: Find out how to make simple animations in Flash CS4 using Action Script 2. Right off the bat I make a new layer and I call it actions. It is always best practice to have your actions on its own layer without graphics. So I start every project off by adding an Actions layer and locking it. On layer one, grab the oval tool make sure that you donrsquo;t have a stroke color and draw a circle on the screen. Hold down shift to constrain the proportions. With the object now selected lets hit the hot key F8, this is going to bring up the Convert to Symbol Dialog box. Make it a movie clip and give it a name of red Ball. Now you should see a movie clip in you library called red Ball. Whatever name you give it if the library doesnrsquo;t matter. Itrsquo;s the instance name that Action Script will be looking for. So select the movie clip and locate your properties panel. In this panel is where you will see a place for an instance name. Lets give it a name of ball. Now select your actions layer and press F9 to get your action panel up.With our actions panel open the first thing we need to do is import what functionality we want to use. WE want tweens and easing. So go ahead and import them by typing "import mx.transitions.Tween; import mx.transitions.easing.The import of tweens is finding a folder with premade tween animation script. The same thing can be said about the easing. But notice on the easing I typed a .* this is telling action script that I want to load all of the easing types so I can use them.Now that we have imported the functionality we can begin animating. To declare a new tween you need to type out new tween open and close (). In side the () flash is expecting 7 parameters. The object that you are wanting to target What property you want to effect. Tween type and easing type. Starting location or starting percentage Ending location or ending percentage Duration True if you want the duration to last in seconds or False if you want the duration to last in frame So lests tackle it. The first parameter is what object I want to effect so I am going to put ball comma. Next is the property, note you have to put this one in quotes, so I want the ball to fall down so quote underscore y quote comma. Here comes the tween and easing type, there are several types of tweens and easing we will cover only one, donrsquo;t worry I made a cheat sheet that you can take and reference for all the types, I want it to bounce and have a bit of ease out. If this part didnrsquo;t turn blue then you spelled something wrong, this part is very case sensitive.Next I want to start the balls position from zero. This number will take the ball from where ever it is at and place it at the y coordinate of zero. If you wanted it to start from where it is on the stage then simply type ball._y here. This says were ever the ball is start here. Next is the ending location. Since I used a numeric value in the previos one I will add a numeric value to this one. But lets say I want it to move 200 pixils from where it is at simply type ball._y + 200.The last two are important to each other , if the last parameter is false then the number will represent a duration in frames. But if the last one is true then the previous number is take place over seconds. So lets add 2 comma true. This says take 2 seconds to play out.Go ahead and test movie and see what happens. You just made action script animate your ball. Donrsquo;t forget to grab my cheat sheets and source file at Jermbo.com Flash,,Tutorials Pixil.info clean No http://pixil.info/tutorials/sketch-to-vector/ http://pixil.info/tutorials/sketch-to-vector/#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:04:48 +0000 PixilStaff http://pixil.info/?p=102

Episode 10

Jermbo shows us some cool techniques to turn a sketch into a vector masterpiece!

]]> http://pixil.info/tutorials/sketch-to-vector/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Episode 10 Watch Video Play NowStreaming Video YouTubeiPhone Video Coming up on today's epsiode: Jermbo shows us some cool techniques to turn a sketch into a vector masterpiece! I have opened ... Episode 10 Watch Video Play NowStreaming Video YouTubeiPhone Video Coming up on today's epsiode: Jermbo shows us some cool techniques to turn a sketch into a vector masterpiece! I have opened my sketch in Adobe Illustrator CS4. The very first thing I like to do is lock my original art layer, and give it a name of BG. And now add a new layer and call it base. Generally I like to do 95% of my drawing on one layer but there are times when it is necessary to add more, but I will cross that when I get there. Make sure that the layer called base is selected, you know this by the blue highlight over the layer. Grab the direct select tool and then the pen tool. Go down to your foreground and stroke icons and make sure the fill is set to none. You can do that by clicking on the fill box to bring it to the front and the selecting the box with the line through it. Itrsquo;s the third little box. The first one is for a solid color and the second one is for a gradient fill. Now letrsquo;s begin the vectorization! I am going to start at the peace holding hand. And what I am doing is outlining the entire hand not worrying about the details in side. If you noticed that sometimes I donrsquo;t place the node exactly where I want it, I simply press the space bar while the mouse button is still down and move it where I want it to be. Now I am going into the detail parts. Take a few moments and outline the rest on the guy and add the line detail on the inside. One trick that I use for the circle eyes and other objects is grab the oval tool in to tool bar or hit the ldquo;Lrdquo; key, the draw the perfect circle. Donrsquo;t forget to save often! When you think you have everything outlined and all the detail added, turn off the sketch layer. Now turn it back on to see if there is any detail that you might have missed, do this until all the detail is complete. Filling Process This part is important. I grabbed all of the outsides of the outlines, leaving the detail lines alone, and gave them a fill. What! This is all out of whack. Donrsquo;t worry because we are going to take a few seconds to place them where we need them. I want to now go over some hot keys with you. I could send a lot of time selecting an object that I want to move and go to appearance and send back or send front , but that is too time consuming. Instead I am going to use Control plus the Left Bracket key to send back one level. ( Command left bracket on a Mac. ) I am going to continues hitting that combination until that Item is behind the other item. For example notice the shirt sleeve is above the arm, thatrsquo;s not right, I know I want that all the way in the back, so I am going to hit Control plus Shift plus Left Bracket to send it to back. Just use Command instead of control on a Mac. The Same thing with the ear. But notice one eye brow is covered up by the hair, sending it back isnrsquo;t the right thing to do so lets send it all the way to the front. The process is the same sending something back or forth, the difference is the bracket key. So we want to sent this one to the front, lets hit Control plus Shift plus Right Bracket key and BOOM! Its on top. Go ahead and pick some base colors you like for the shirt hair skin and necklace spikes . The blob bruch is coming up. Blob Brush Features Now for the Blob brush! I want oto go over a few settings first so double click on the blob brush icon and the options will show up. Since I am using a wacom tablet then this helps the tool be the best it can. I like to keep selected unchecked and selection limits merged also unchecked. They both do exactly what they say. Fidelity at the lowest number 0.5 allows you to record exactly what movements you make. The higher the number, 20 being the max, the more the computer tried to guess to what you meant. So my number is 2.5, here it copies the right amount of information while fixing the small errors for me. Smoothness does exactly what it says, I like to ke... Illustrator,,Tutorials Pixil.info clean No http://pixil.info/tutorials/painting-techniques/ http://pixil.info/tutorials/painting-techniques/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:00:21 +0000 PixilStaff http://pixil.info/?p=88

Episode 6

Jermbo shows us his painting techniques in photoshop.

]]> http://pixil.info/tutorials/painting-techniques/feed/ 0 00:01:01 Episode 6 Watch Video Play NowStreaming Video YouTubeiPhone Video Coming up on today's epsiode: Jermbo shows us his painting techniques in photoshop. Well lets go a head and open up photoshop. ... Episode 6 Watch Video Play NowStreaming Video YouTubeiPhone Video Coming up on today's epsiode: Jermbo shows us his painting techniques in photoshop. Well lets go a head and open up photoshop. I like to start out with a sketch and scan it in so i have a good base to start painting on. The first thing I like to do is make a white layer and place it on the bottom on the layers. Then I set the sketch to about 50% opacity. make a new blank layer on top of the sketch and start painting. I have completed some of the painting before but you can see the layers of what i have done. On that first layer above the sketch I grabbed the brush set the opacity to 20 or 25% and slopped on color to get a basic color pallet. Once the base colors are placed down, i make a new layer and start blending the colors together. I like to use the eye dropper to pick my next color, that way the colors stay in the came range. I turn on and off the sketch and bg layer to see my progress at times. Now that I am happy with the hands i will start on the bg. the easiest thing I do is make a new layer and set it behind the hands layer. Photoshop,,Tutorials Pixil.info clean No