MOBILE USERS this thing seems to really choke on mobile, so maybe don't even try
Some things in this film that you can't do in a standard video player:
Unknown runtime
No rewinding, no skipping ahead
Extremely dense patterns that would get destroyed by video compression
Moiré effects that change if you mess with the zoom setting on your browser
Effects that change depending on if you're using flash player or Ruffle
And more!
Technical note:
Most of the effects here are done with gradients, shape tweens, bitmap fills and blending modes, meaning something like this theoretically could have been made as early as 2005 (maybe blending modes came a little later?), though at the time the narration probably would have seemed very weird. It likely wouldn't have been able to run at 60fps, either.
There's almost no code - just the interactive stuff is as3, which I'd never used before this. I've decided I hate it.
Here's the source file, if you want a peek behind the curtain (no audio, it makes the file like 20x bigger)
Big thanks to:
(Update 5/19/2023)
We won the jam which is cool! (1st interactive movie). Today I was talking to Harvey about what the "point" of the movie is supposed to be, and I was actually able to put it pretty succinctly, so I thought I'd paste it here as the official "artist's statement." (Spoilers):
The thing I was getting at in the video was that the domino-effect of people building on each others' ideas is less likely to happen if the medium is already "dead," which is important because every antiquated way of doing things still has it's own unique aesthetic strengths in addition to its shortcomings. (you kind of have to put the pieces together yourself that that's the thesis of the video - the idea that old technology can have obscure strengths over new technologies is only spelled out plainly in the phone call at the end)
Oh also, we were on the front page of Hacker News for a minute! If you want to see a bunch of nerds reminisce about flash, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35649245
It's been a while since a piece of video art has hit me properly - I rarely leave reviews, but this deserves one.
I thought Flash was cool, but was too young/anxious to actually devote time to learning the medium. Now, as an adult, I'm learning Blender (in part) because it's easily accessible form reminds me of the past Internet, it was cool to see a philosophy of web creation I understand reflected with care.
Very well done.
the visuals were amazing, but it was also amazing seeing how well those visuals were seemlessly used to compliment the spoken word and enhance the message
I knew going in there was gonna be some extremely impressive visuals, but I was blown away by your philosophical musings on art.
Fantastically done.
I don't know how you did any of this and i like it that way, its like david blaine street magic in flash. the one thing you explained with using a pencil brush to re-create the boiling effect, pretty sure i saw you explain that one before.
This was pretty cool!
Loved the dialogue and conversation, I completely agree with the view and understand it.
The visual effects were phenominal!
