Next up is the fact that Adobe’s story with Flash has always been a VM that works exactly the same on any platform. The only problem with this story is that they never achieved it, even on desktops. For years Flash player was noticeably slower on Macs then PC. Adobe hardly supported Linux and the player was so buggy it was clear Adobe couldn’t care less about it. When Adobe started pushing Flash to run on Mobile, Apple locked them out and thanks to the fragmentation of Android Flash just could not deliver. By the time Adobe finally figured out how to get Flash to run decently on iOS via AIR they had lost performance on Android. The two mobile platforms were never in sync, nor would Adobe ever be able to keep them on par performance wise since they lack the resources to support hundreds of different mobile devices. When you have to spend more time optimizing your AIR app for one platform over the other, especially when your desktop/web code would run fine but fail on mobile (for good reason given the limited resources these devices have) it becomes a logistical nightmare to support fractured code bases of the same application.

Let’s not forget that Adobe was always far behind the native language and it took constant updates to the runtime just to support the most basic features of each devices. To accommodate this Adobe started supporting something called Native Extension where you mix native code in with your AIR project to roll your own solution for features Adobe didn’t support. For me this was the deathblow and clearly showing that AIR was a total failure. Why would I write native code that is not portable across each mobile OS and still try to maintain a horribly performing Flash application? There is no cost savings and as a develop you are now responsible for “patching” the runtime so if you don’t know the native languages you are basically screwed. It’s not like Adobe released a community site to share native extensions easily among developers so everyone is just forced to reinvent the wheel on their own projects. Native Extension is just another half-baked solution and one more nail in the runtime’s coffin.

On top of this Flex just wasn’t up to the task of being a mobile UI. Originally Adobe announced that they were going to create a new mobile friendly version of the Flex framework. They never delivered, instead they decided to try and patch the existing framework and optimize it for mobile. That may have worked except Adobe still hadn’t even finished porting over most of Flex’s components from 3.0 to 4.0. On top of that Flex is a total dog, even on a powerful desktop. You would think a company who had been trying to get Flash to run on mobile devices since Flash Player 6 on Pocket PCs would have been forward thinking enough to actually build Flex in a way that would eventually work on Mobile but they didn’t. It’s no surprise Adobe announced the end of Flex’s development yesterday. They just can’t support it. Between the fragmentation of Flash across mobile devices, and the legacy code they never addressed deep in the core of the framework Flex was dead way before most people even wanted to accept it.

What makes the end of Flex incredibly scary is how dependent most enterprises are on it. Adobe has nothing else to offer as a transition away from the framework. They are only now shifting focus to HTML 5, which is still years away from being on par with most of what Flex could deliver. Make no mistake about it, companies like banks, financial institutions all the way up to the government are now dependent on Flex. While Flex and Flash will limp on for some time there is absolutely no reason why they should or would invest more money in moving these products forward. Most companies will have to go into maintenance mode on these apps and start moving over to HTML 5. This will be incredibly expensive and time consuming especially in a period when most companies are struggling to stay in business due to the weak economy.

With nothing really ready to replace Flex companies have a tough choice to make and this will no doubt create bitterness and resentment towards Adobe over screwing them over. Smaller Flash agencies that haven’t hired resources for HTML 5 yet are going to have a hard time finding new clients who will be confident making Flash sites. Sure banners and micro sites will exist for years to come but if these clients haven’t given up on Flash yet over iOS, then someone needs to sit down with them and fill them in on the reality that Flash is not making a comeback. This resentment will tarnish Adobe’s name even more then Apple has and honestly at this point who would really trust Adobe to make development tools for HTML 5 or a new platform?

Flash Builder, formerly Flex Builder is horrible. It’s one of the worst pieces of software I own. It’s a shame when you are a tool company that can’t build tools for your own platform. For years other companies have been able to build much better IDEs for Flash such as FDT, IntelliJ and even Flash Develop, which is totally free. Adobe knows nothing about developer tools and it’s clear in Flash Builder, Flash Pro and Catalyst the poster child for complete and utter Adobe tool failure. I mean what do you expect? Its not like we have been telling Adobe what we need in the enterprise space for years… oh wait we have been but they continue not to listen to its own community. Ironically when I saw the tweets that Adobe had announced they are exiting the enterprise space I was shocked because I never considered them actively participating in it.

Let’s talk about community, or what is left of it? The biggest blow to Flash from the layoffs is the dismantling of the community teams. The one thing that used to keep me interested in Flash was its community but with the restructuring most of the people who I respected are gone so who is going to help message that things will be ok? I am watching all of Flash’s evangelists trying to keep people calm and maybe it’s just me but if you can’t see through their bullshit then you probably think Adobe is going to continue to really contribute to Flex when they open source. Now with Adobe’s Flash community gone, and no new community initiative to harness disgruntled Flash developers who have moved on what incentive do I have to keep my opinion to myself? Why would you even want to be involved with a company who’s Product Manager goes around calling other developers who try new technology douche bags? I guess I get the last laugh because this douche bag knew better and spent the last 3 years learning languages/platforms that will survive long after Flash is dead.

It’s about time Adobe showed its true colors. Adobe is just a company, they are not your friends, they don’t care about you, shit they don’t even care about their own employees. Nothing like gloating that Adobe will reach their 4th quarter financial goals after laying off 10% of their company. I feel bad for the people who were not laid off, if you think your job is secure guess again. As Adobe quickly starts shutting down more and more resources around AIR and Flash there will be more layoffs. The best part is that no one questions the leadership of their CEO because he is “trimming the fat”. Flash represents 4% of their revenue, why would they spend so much time, energy and resources on it when everyone hates it now? Finally they woke up and realized that Photoshop on a tablet is going to make more money for them then selling overpriced licenses of Flash Builder ever will.

The final deathblow to Flash is this new initiative to turn Flash into a gaming platform. I guess Adobe missed the memo but Flash was already a gaming platform despite their best efforts to not improve it over the years like everyone was begging them to do. All of the things we had been asking for such as a more robust language, multi-threading, GPU acceleration and better performance would have actually made Flash a gaming platform organically. Now Adobe has to shoe horn all of that crap in or just move over to a new VM. That would be fine except the advantage of Flash was that it is installed on basically every computer. A new VM means a new download and honestly no one is going to do it. The Metro version of IE on Windows 8 isn’t even going to support plugins. Unity is way better at delivering games and their penetration numbers are incredibly low.

Adobe is going to have a hard time selling Flash to game companies. Not after this PR nightmare, I mean what company in their right mind would trust Adobe or Flash? Adobe knows nothing about gaming, Flash gave birth to the casual gaming market and they completely ignore it while they were on the quest to build a better video player. Now that plugins are dead the last thing we need is a new game centric plugin. That is what my mobile phone is for and my tablet; casual games. When I want real games I turn on my Xbox or PS3. Mobile gaming is where the money is at now and Adobe still can’t get Stage 3d to run on mobile. They don’t even have tools to support a 3d workflow. Remember Adobe is a tools company, if they don’t have tools to sell they don’t make money from the platform unless they license it out and who would honestly pay for that? I am sure RIM is happy with that arrangement.

I could probably go on for days criticizing Adobe and what has happened over the past week. In the end it doesn’t matter because Flash is such a small part of my development now. I moved on long ago because Adobe just doesn’t understand developers. They never did and they actually killed a good thing. While they were too busy criticizing my loyalty they totally proved me right. You can only get away with abusing your community until they finally turn. Now with all the negative PR, the end of development of Flex and the general public’s negative image of Flash Adobe should have just declared it dead and made this easy. Don’t be fooled, it will take a long time for Flash to finally die. When it does I will not be there to morn its loss, I suggest you don’t be around for it either. Three years ago I started telling Flash developers to branch out, learn new languages and grow their skill set, I hope someone was listening.

I have started a google+ thread here to capture your comments and start a discussion around the Adobe announcements.

The Build conference has been an almost life changing event for me. I don’t say stuff like this lightly. I have been a Web developer for the last 13 some odd years doing mostly Flash development. I also know several other languages and have been doing lots of native mobile dev lately. If you know anything about the tech community, you probably have an idea of Flash’s downward spiral right now. Before I went to Build I was in a state of dev limbo. I had no idea what I would be doing next and no languages or platforms were really exciting me. This past year I did some wp7 development and fell in love with C# and the tools but the market for wp7 users is too small to be worth me dedicating much of my time to. Well, that all changed at Build. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about a platform and it’s all thanks to Windows 8.

As an entrepreneurial developer, I look at the potential growth of any platform I dedicate my time towards learning and developing on. Picking up a new language is a long and arduous process. Sometime it’s incredibly fun but it has to be rewarding at the same time. I want to focus my time on a platform that is going to have the largest reach and opportunity for financial gain. The way I see it, Windows 8 is going to be one of the largest developer centric platforms available when it launches. It’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of reaching millions upon millions of consumers via one of the most successful computer platforms ever. Being able to reach every person who buys a PC from the lowest end sub $400 desktop to the highest end gaming rig along with the new generation of slate and ultra portable laptop computers with a single OS is about as good as it gets for me. Even with the success of the iPad I find it hard to believe that desktop and laptop computers are going to just go the way of the dodo bird over night. Perhaps Windows 8 is the opportunity hardware manufactures have been waiting for to compete in both spaces at the same time.

For me, the greatest advantage of doing Windows development right now is Microsoft’s “developer centric” approach to coding on their platform. What do I mean by developer centric? Take a look at the choice of languages you have at your disposal for building Metro Style apps. You can use C++ for the most processor intensive types of applications or games. There is C# for the Silverlight and WFP developers along with Visual Basic. These three languages share XAML for the display layer and come with a suite of components developers can take advantage of to help build consistent looking apps. For developers who can’t design, Metro is made for you. By simply using the built in components you get the default Metro look and feel in your app for free leaving more time for you to focus on what matters most, the code.

If those 3 languages aren’t your thing there is now HTML 5 which is treated like a native language in Windows 8. This opens up the flood gate to all the Web developers who are either transitioning out of Flash or have been JS/HTML developers this entire time. My big take away from all of this is that unlike Apple who forces you to use their language and tools, MS is actively trying to cater to the largest demographic of developers possible. With Win 8, I can pick the language that best fits my needs and skill level, I am not being forced into something I don’t want to do. The only downside is that their tools only run on Windows but since the apps you will be building run there as well it’s really par for the course.

When I originally bought my UMPC I desperately wanted to develop apps for it. Even back then I saw the potential of the slate form factor but the hardware and software just wasn’t there. Even if I could build an app for these devices how was I going to distribute it? The market for UMPCs was incredibly small and there was no way I would ever make a profit. With a unified App store on Win 8, and given the reach of the platform, those fears are long gone. Plus, as WP7 continues to grow market share, being able to deploy basically the same application to mobile devices in addition to desktop and tablet/slate is incredible.

I could probably drone on and on about how excited I am to start developing for Windows 8. At Build I didn’t go to any of the after parties and was coding in my hotel room each night. The fact that they gave out a slate with Win 8 installed on it definitely helped. Even if you don’t have one of these computers, anyone can download a preview of the OS and start coding for it. While iOS is still proving to be an incredibly lucrative platform for developers it would be crazy to miss out on an opportunity like this when Win 8 launches. “Windows 7 has sold more than 100 million copies in six months which made it Microsoft’s fastest selling operating system” according to wikipedia. So if a few million people buy Win 8 devices when they come out and I am able to sell at least 100,000 copies of my app for a $1 in the first few months I would make a healthy chunk of change. Plus it’s not just about buying new devices, all of the millions of existing Windows users can simply upgrade and instantly help grow the platform overnight. That is probably the single most important path to success with Win 8 is that no new hardware is required, it still works on most modern computers everyone may already have. All I need to do now is be ready for the launch with as many great apps and games as I can come up with. As much as I would hate to have the competition, I suggest you at least give it a try. C# is an amazing language, Visual Studio is an incredible tool and Windows 8 has the potential to be a huge success.

I have started a google+ thread here to capture your comments and start a discussion around the Windows 8 announcement.

What projects are you working on right now and what are you using to build them?

I have been all over the place at Roundarch lately. I recently finished up a huge Flash project then went right into a native Android app and even had to help out on a custom WordPress project for the front end of an enterprise app. Outside of coding I am involved in pitches and research. There is a lot of mobile on my plate as well as HTML 5. Flash/Flex is not so common for me but people keep telling me it is still being asked for. I do try to pitch AIR for mobile when I get the chance since right now it is still the only multi-platform game in town that I feel comfortable with. Outside of that I always say go native but have even dabbled with PhoneGap a bit as a backup plan.

For my development I use IntelliJ. It’s the only IDE that allows me to go from Flash to native Android and not give me any problems. I am not a big Eclipse fan and find that while there are lots of plugins out there for it, most of them are unstable or conflict with other plugins. IntilliJ doesn’t have any of those issues, it just works. When I am doing HTML 5, JavaScript or PHP I use PHPStorm which is a scaled down version of IntelliJ without all other stuff you don’t need for web dev.

You’ve worked on all types of projects, from enterprise-level applications to casual games. What area of development do you enjoy the most?

I really have a passion for making games. That is actually how I got into Flash but I quickly realized there was no money in it so I started doing agency/enterprise work. Now I focus 100% of my free time to making games for the web and mobile. I have a long ways to go before I will probably make a successful one but I need all the practice I can get. I am great at the technical part but I am still trying to find that magical formula for fun. Right now mobile is big, especially for casual games. It’s a good time to try and be part of the mobile indi/casual game market since trying to monetize web games was never that lucrative. Don’t get me wrong, devs can and have made livings off of Flash based web games but people are spending more time on their phones and tablets then their computer or TVs now a days.

As a creative developer, do you think it’s necessarily bad to move back to a more dynamic, less strict language like javascript?

At first I was really opposed to doing Java Script. After spending years understanding Classes, Design Patterns and building large scale web applications it felt like a total step back to the stone ages. Over the last two years I have worked very hard on being able to understand development and be language agnostic. It wasn’t until recently that I could look at a language and not try to compare it to ActionScript which is what I primarily worked with. Now that I have this perspective shift I see the strength and weaknesses of JS in a new light.

There are some aspects of the language that are truly freeing. Then I hit a wall because I still cling to the what I am comfortable with. In the end we all have to accept whatever the next language is with open arms. At least for now it looks like Java Script is what will take us in to the next cycle of web development while Flash slowly (or quickly depending on how you look at it) becomes even more specialized.

If you can keep an open mind while learning a new language you will pick it up a lot faster. It’s important to try and stay positive and challenge yourself with tasks you can accomplish. In the past I would bite off more then I could chew with a new language and flounder. With JS I am taking it nice and slow and at my own pace. Also having a solid IDE like PHPStorm or WebStorm which has code hinting is monumental in easing the burden of learning JS.

A lot of people are uptight these days when it comes to technology discussions. Why do you think people get so defensive about a specific technology?

I once had a teacher who said that when you do something more then 3 times it becomes a habit. Think about how much repetition there is in development. Programming is a very personal experience for people. In order to be good at a language you have to be close to it, speak it and understand it. Developers form a special bond with the platform they are working on and when something disrupts that balance they tend to lash out. I probably spend more time with my code then I do my wife, my kid, my family or my friends. That’s a lot of time to spend with something and you grow to love it.

Programming languages come and go, they all have their own life cycle. Not to get all spiritual on everyone but it does become like a religion to some people. It also doesn’t help that the companies that develop these products brain wash their user base into thinking their platform is the best one out there and sometimes go to great lengths to bring down the competition. It is all marketing at the end of the day, companies are selling developers a dream and it’s heard to stop drinking the kool-aid. I can clearly remember how hard Adobe’s stance was on Silverlight yet when Apple called them out for their own faults they cried foul.

There will always be those people who can’t move on or choose not to when a platform is nearing the end of its life cycle. There was a huge rift between Director and Flash developers until it was clear that Flash was going to be the winning platform. Adobe still supports Director to some extent so these things die slow and painful deaths. Sometimes it’s hard to see the end of a platform because as more people move away from it there is an over abundance of work since less and less developers are around to do it. Eventually that work becomes maintenance and who wants to be the last one at the party. I guarantee if you can find director work you will be highly paid, not because it’s “in” but because everyone is out.

In the end you need to look past the marketing and find the platform that is right for you. Some people pick languages that have no commercial value simply because they are fun. Others go where the money is. The worst thing we can do is be critical of other languages or developers who chose to explore new languages. This is exactly what is going on in the Flash community and it will be the thing that tears it apart. What is even worse is that Adobe is doing little to help ease the rift between those who feel abandoned and the ones who are still making a living with it.

Eventually when a company doesn’t see a return on investment for a platform it gets canned and everyone feels cheated. Even bringing this up and making people nervous about it sparks all kinds of emotions. Just look at how large of an ecosystem depends on a development platform and you can see there are a lot of things at stake when it is threatened. People lose their jobs, their entire living could be flushed down the toilet just because a company failed to maintain it’s hold on the market.

Do you still prefer WP7 as your main device OS and are you developing for it?

Yes, my main phone is still a WP7. In my opinion it is the best OS out there right now. I also loved developing on it. I have not done much Objective C but between Flash, JavaScript/HTML5 and Java for Android, C# was the best language to develop with. The tools are top notch, especially when you add ReSharper to Visual Studio and the Mobile platform is well architected. Unfortunately I have not had much time to build another WP7 app but I think about it whenever I start a new personal project. Microsoft has a huge hill to climb when it comes to getting the adoption rate up and this is not a battle they can just throw money at like they did with Silverlight. MS is really going to have to innovate the platform and that is exactly what they have been doing so far. WP7.5 looks amazing and they are really pulling away from the heard of mobile OSs.

Adobe Flash is still very widespread, but the tools and support are arguably lacking. C# and Visual Studio are obviously amazing, but its products lag behind. What can either of these companies do to help perfect that cycle?

One day I am going to sit down and finish this series of articles I have been wanting to do where I talk about how I would run companies like Microsoft, Adobe, RIM and others. To say that Flash’s tools are lacking is an understatement. Just look at 3rd party IDEs like FDT and IntelliJ and you will see how far behind Adobe is on their own platform. Even worse is the fact that Unity 3D will be compiling to Flash so that will be the only real solution for a 3D IDE for Flash. Adobe continues to dump so much money into Flash Builder yet a much smaller team maintains IntelliJ which handles countless languages with ease. Adobe doesn’t have a strategy for building developer tools, and the fact that all of their IDE’s still don’t work together is a clear indication on how dysfunctional their future vision for their products is.

Adobe needs to learn how to become a developer IDE company or buy a company that understands what developers want. Microsoft is the exact opposite, they build the best development tools out there, they treat their developers with respect and actually listen to what they want. That kind of dedication to their community really shows through in the tools, the language, and the entire platform. The only problem MS has is that they like to kill off their platforms as soon as they mature. WFP to Silverliight, Silvelright to HTML 5, who knows what’s next? They are a wild card right now with this move to Windows 8 being JS and HTML based. We’ll have to see what they are planning on doing with C# and .Net in September at their Build conference. I’ll be there of course, I think they have an ace up their sleeves. As for Adobe if they can’t migrate Flex over to being GPU accelerated through Stage3d in the next 2 product cycles they will lose any foothold they hope to make in the mobile space. By the end of the year every major mobile language will be hardware accelerated except for Flash.

If you could choose one programming language to rule them all, RIGHT NOW, what would it be?
What’s next for Jesse Freeman?

If I had my choice it would be C# but the reality is that I will most likely be doing JavaScript and HTML 5 for the next few months. There is a lot of posability there and it has the largest potential penetration numbers plus it runs on iOS (to some degree). Right now it’s all about iOS and I am really feeling the itch to learn some Objective C but I keep holding out for Adobe to get its act together. There is an interesting space growing with HTML 5 to Native packagers and some of them even offer native Open GL replacements for canvas. I think the person who figures out how to cross compile JS and still allow it to run on the web is going to be the winner. I have a feeling that Microsoft will be first to market with that. I dream of a C# to JS compiler that is usable. JS should not be written by hand, it’s a language that screams to be generated and I have yet to be impressed with Coffee Script.

Let’s wrap it up with 5 TRUE / FALSE questions:
Canvas games will overtake Flash games by 2013?
False

WP7 will eventually take off and Visual Studio will be on all of our computers.
True (If every computer is a PC)

Adobe AIR will become a wildly popular solution for cross-device development.
True

People will eventually get along and start being creative again.
False

Apple is evil.
True

I’ve known Seb for a few years now and have been a big fan of his work even longer. One of the reasons I decided to take this workshop was a desire to become more familiar with the new concepts going on in HTML 5 revolving around Canvas and WebGL. Seb is a great presenter. If you have seen him at any of the hundreds of conferences he speaks at each year you already know what I’m talking about. Seb has a great way of simplifying complex concepts like “maths” (as he calls it) and making it approachable by design-centric developers like me. Granted, a lot of the math covered is common knowledge, or at least is to me because I have been a Flash developer for the past 10 years, but it was really great to see how all of my Flash skills still directly apply to all the new HTML 5 and JavaScript.

What I Learned

Seb’s workshop is action-packed with a ton of code samples and demos. Here are a few things we covered:

Particles. Yup, Seb is the Particle King. For the past few years, he has always shown off how versatile particle systems were in Flash. It was great to get a refresher course on how to do them with Canvas, and some of the techniques he showed off are simple yet powerful ways to achieve really rich visuals. Here are a few of my particle experiments:

After the basic introduction on how particles work, I quickly built a confetti fountain.

From there, I accidentally created a particle WiFi signal. A big part of the workshop revolves around exploration time.

Soon after the basic particle system introduction, we began working on more complex things like explosions. A great tip on how to get the trails is to repaint the canvas with a slightly transparent fill versus a full clear.

After particles, Seb went into more complex uses for drawing such as drawing trees. It may not sound very interesting at first, but it’s a key skill to learn because it teaches you recursion and how the rotation system works in Canvas. With Canvas, you actually rotate the entire coordinate system when you perform a rotation, kind of how it works in Processing. Seb does a good job of explaining this concept; it helps to think of it as a real canvas so you can rotate it to help make drawing easier. Canvas has a save and restore system so you can save the previous coordinate state, rotate to do your drawing, then restore it to the original state. This is probably the steepest learning curve when drawing with Canvas versus Flash’s system.

From there, we moved onto the building blocks of asteroids, which is a Seb staple from his Flash presentation days and probably the best real-world and fun thing do to with a drawing API. Here is my attempt at making some graphics for asteroids:

Seb presents you with round asteroids, and it’s your job to make them look more random and irregular. It takes awhile to get used to Canvas’s orientation system, but the best part of the exploration time is accidentally coming up with cool things.

Another cool exercise was creating a thruster effect for the ship. Seb has an interesting use for Modulus in order to control and reset the length of the flame as the thruster burns at full blast.

After asteroids, Seb goes into building a simple 3D engine and eventually into Mr. Doob’s Three.js, which is a great 3D engine for JavaScript. The highlight of the 3D presentation was seeing the speed difference between Three.js’s Canvas implementation versus the WebGL version. WebGL is a serious contender in the 3D space, and when/if other browsers actually implement it as well as Chrome has, it will be a very impressive contender to dethrone Flash. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, that day is very far away.

Conclusion

If you are at all interested in HTML 5 Canvas, JavaScript, and WebGL, I highly suggest checking out this workshop. It is really perfect for Flash developers looking to transition into the HTML 5 world, and you will be relieved at how much is actually the same. You may also be shocked, like I was, that most of this is old hat by now and hopefully you will be less de-motivated than I was to be revisiting all of these concepts after mastering them several years ago. Seb is a great presenter and probably one of the only people I know who is perfect at giving a class like this. Check out his site for the next workshop time/date/location, and if you want to see how the classes evolve, make sure you follow the #CreativeJS Twitter tag when a workshop is going on.

When I moved into the East Village I didn’t have a job and I didn’t know anyone. I actually wasn’t even really a programmer, I was more of an animator/designer in Flash. I knew some programming but was still struggling with prototyping. I became friendly with my neighbor across the hallway who was the creative director at Arista Records. I helped him mod his XBox and he threw me a job. It was a series of banners for Outkast. They loved my work and I moved onto doing full websites. I had never built a full site before in Flash, but I took the job anyways. They were paying a lot of money for these micro sites so after doing two of them I had enough code in place to templetize them. With my new collection of code I was able to build each site in a week, when it originally took me a month in a half. Of course I was still billing out as if it took me 2 months to build it. The entire time I worked for them I made sure to build a reusable library of code and keep honing my skills. Eventually as the Arista worked dried up, since they were going out of business, I had to move onto a new client.

After Arista, I answered an ad on craigslist for a Flash Developer job, and when I showed up for the interview it turned out to be at the New York Jets. They needed a part time Flash developer to help out but they were paying an incredibly low hourly rate. My wife thought I was crazy when I took the job, especially after all the high priced work I did for Arista. I had saved up more then enough money to take a gamble and it paid off for me. After a few months of working for the Jets, they trusted me enough to hire me as a consultant at a more realistic hourly rate. I have been able to build a great working relationship with them over the past 7 years and have done a lot of work for them. I turned those few months of working at a lower rate into something that actually helped make my career. Between the work I had done for the Arista Records and having the Jets on my resume I was able to pick up bigger and bigger clients. When I finally made the switch to full time, all my experience working for the Jets helped me get a job at MLB. So what can you take away from this story?

I have always been a networker, it’s an important skill to have. Living in the right neighborhood with people your age doing similar things as you do allows you to make contacts that can expand your network and help get you work. One of the most amazing parts about New York City is that you never know who you will meet and how you will be able to help each other out. This is one of the reasons I started my Developer Happy Hour meetup to help people build those relationships. Also, I put in a lot of time working for the Jets and Arista records. I was working hard on my 10,000 hours during those 3 years while I was also going to school to get my Masters in Computer Art from SVA. It was probably one of the most productive times of my life. I took all of these opportunities and made the most out of them because that is what you have to do here. But it wasn’t always a bed of roses, here are some things you need to do to protect yourself in the city.

Protect Yourself As A Freelancer

The city is a dangerous place, and working in the city can be incredibly ruthless. Freelancing can burn you out and you can get ripped off if you are not careful. My number one rule for avoiding getting screwed over is to get a lawyer. I have an amazing lawyer, his specialty is in Internet business and he is worth every penny. You would be crazy putting together a $50k or higher job without having a lawyer spend time, even at $250 an hour, putting together a contract that protects you! Here a situation I got into while freelancing and how I didn’t get burned because my contract was air tight and I used a lawyer.

I took on a job where I was going to do some Flash elevator displays which was new technology at the time. The project was for a huge agency, and the client was equally important. It was a simple job for $10,000. I did the work and the creative director wanted to make some changes. Changes to completed work is the number one place where you will get screwed time and time again. In my contract, especially when it’s a fixed bid, changes are done at an inflated hourly rate. I always make my rate higher on fixed bid projects to deter changes. I agreed to make them and they agreed to pay the additional fees. I rebuilt all of the swfs 3 times while working with the creative director. I was starting to spend a lot of time making these changes and at this point I wasn’t feeling comfortable continuing to work without getting a check to cover the growing bill. When it comes to getting paid for work, I follow the thirds rule, ⅓ up front, ⅓ in the middle and the rest when I finish. As you can imagine, this project was starting to rack up a rather large bill with all these changes and this is where things started turning nasty.

They day before they were planning on showing the client the work, they refused to honor our agreement to pay the additional hours I had spent making the changes. In return, I refused to deliver the work. The agency’s client was actually flying in from Europe in person for this presentation and I knew that if I gave in I would not see the money. The AC, Account Coordinator, called me up and threatened to sue me among other things. I hung up and had my lawyer call him. After that, the AC call be back, apologized and asked me where they could messenger the money to. If I had not held my ground, used my lawyer, and given into delivering the files, I never would have seen the money. When you are living on a tight budget, getting paid becomes a big issue here. I couldn’t afford to lose out on the money they owed me at this point. Sure enough they sent a messenger to my apartment with a check and I sent them the final files.

Most people would be afraid to lose a client but my feeling has always been if they are not willing to pay me why would you work for them again? Sure enough I was “black listed” at this agency and after having a very nice chat with the head of the company about what happened, I informed him I also would never work with them again either. This kind of stuff happens all the time here. Lets recap:

Freelance Rules

1. Always make sure your lawyer looks over any contract you sign with a client.
2. Make sure changes in scope and additional work are covered in your contract.
3. Use the one third payment rule: ⅓ up front, ⅓ in the middle and ⅓ at the end.
4. Don’t deliver any critical source code or files unless you have final payment or know you will get it within 15 to 30 days. Payment due dates should be explicitly stated in your contract.
5. Do not fight with difficult clients, have your lawyer or business manager handle it. You don’t ever want to be the bad guy.
6. Use your head, never take on a job if you have a bad feeling about it. Also, do research from your network on what a place is like to work for before you take the job.

There are lots of other things I have learned from freelancing here but I don’t think I can ever cover them all. You just learn these things as you go along.

Protect Yourself As A Full Timer

When you take on full time work there isn’t much you can do to protect yourself outside of being smart about understanding the position you are being hired for. When you begin to work out the details of what compensation package will get at a company, always remember that everything is negotiable. That doesn’t mean you will get everything you want but be open to giving up one thing in place of another. Here are a few things I always negotiate when looking for a new job.

Salary is obviously the top item you want to negotiate. This is a difficult topic to handle and I could write a book on how to do it. Use tools like Salary.com to figure out what you could expect to be paid and always reference your current salary or what you expect is fair compensation in the negotiation. You should avoid lateral pay moves and I try to turn down sign on bonuses in order to get a higher base salary. The biggest issues with your starting salary is that it will only increase 3-5% a year based on average raises so what you start out with is incredibly important to the long term financial grown at that company. The only way to make a big pay jump is to get a new job. I avoid the counter offer from a company that doesn’t want to lose you because it always makes you look bad and they will never trust that you will stay again.

Title, be very clear what you title is, what you will be responsible for, and what your growth path is at a company. Titles don’t really mean much at the company you work at but they are important tools for moving into the next level if you decide to leave the company and get a new job. Also, find out how many people you will be working with, your role in the team, if you will be managing people and how many. Sometimes a higher title demands more responsibility and time so make sure you clearly understand your role in the company.

Vacation days are probably the single most important thing you can try to negotiate. Most companies have a 2 week policy when starting out. Higher level positions can get more time. I find that if the salary is lower than you would like, most companies would be willing to add in an extra week of vacation. It’s worth a shot. It’s also important to mention you would be willing to cap vacation travel to two weeks or less if they give you more time because most places are not comfortable with employees being gone for three or more straight weeks. If that is a condition to getting the extra days, make sure it is in writing.

Conferences are usually the last thing I try to negotiate. Going to conferences and being part of the community is important for your growth as a developer. The company you work for should want you to take an active roll in the community as well as having you get their name out. Most companies should allow you to go to one conference a year and cover some if not all of the expenses. I find that if you are speaking at conferences, most companies don’t have a problem with you going. Especially if the conference is covering the hotel and/or flight. This goes back to the vacation because at previous places I have been happy to use vacation and cover my own costs to travel to a conference to make sure I could attend.

Of course there are many other important things you should try to negotiate in your contract when starting a full time job so don’t think that these four things are the only items I focus on. Remember, everything is negotiable and you are in the business of making yourself happy first. The worst thing that could happen is that you take a job feeling like you didn’t get what you want and have a miserable time there. Granted you need to have reasonable requests but you can learn a lot about a company’s culture by how the negotiation process goes. In the end, the most important thing to keep in mind is to get EVERYTHING in writing. All of the things you negotiated should be explicitly outlined in your offer letter. It also doesn’t hurt to have a lawyer read over the paperwork you will need to sign such as non-competes, NDAs, and your final offer letter.

Let’s get started with some salary figures. I have collected these numbers from people I know, myself, salary.com (here) and the past few years of hiring Flash developers at the companies I’ve worked for. When it comes to getting work in NYC there are two choices, you are full time (W2) or you are a freelance/consultant (1099). I am not going to get into why you should pick one side over the other so here is a break down of the amounts you could make in each:

Hourly Rates (Freelance or Consultant)

A lot has changed since I was a Flash consultant from 2002 – 2008. Rates have taken a slight dive. On average you can expect to make anywhere from $80 an hour – $150 an hour. Realistically most rates hover at around $100 an hour. If you are incredibly skilled, you will be able to make $120 and above. As a freelancer working an average of 50 hours a week, because in New York there is no such thing as a 40 hour week) you could expect to earn roughly $5,000 a week. I based this on a flat rate of $100 an hour for 50 hours.

When I freelanced I accepted all kinds of hourly rates, above $100 for emergency work and lower than $80 an hour for cool projects. I would imagine it all evens out at about $100 an hour for the year. So to take a rough estimation based on a little down time each month and an hourly rate of $100, you could expect to earn around $180,000 a year. I calculated this number by taking the averaged $5,000 a week, multiply it by 3 weeks and then by 12 months. This should cover dry spells, not having work and vacations. When I freelanced, I would work 60 hours a week for 3 weeks and took the last week of the month off to relax.

Before I move onto full time salary I want to talk about the day rate. In the last year I was consulting I came across a lot of agencies that would require a day rate. This is a not necessarily a bad thing if you know how to negotiate your contract. The way I look at a day rate is you are locking in XX amount of hours a day or week in exchanged for steady work. Average day rates can range from $600 – $1000 a day. Usually the catch is that a day is counted as 10 hours. When I did day rates I would put in my contract that after 10 hours, and every job I ever worked on had weeks were I worked 10+ hours a day, it would go to my regular hourly rate. I would mark up my rate to cover the inconvenience of putting in more then 10 hours a day and cover the loss I took on the hourly rate. On severely bad projects I would actually come out ahead doing the day rate + hourly rate overage so don’t brush this option off because you feel like it’s a bad deal. In New York, lower paying work is better than no work.

Finally I just want to touch on fixed bid projects quickly. This is for people who like to bet on zero in roulette. Some clients will ask for a fixed bid on a project and if you accept you are on the line for delivering on time in the hours you allotted for the project. I have walked away from fixed bid projects making more than my normal hourly and have seen other people get sucked into a never ending project because they did not protect themselves correctly in the contract. The key is to actually work as fast as you can and have a clear idea of what it will take to get the job done. I only take on fixed bid projects when I know I have roughly 60-80% of the code already written for the project. I have gotten jobs like this more times then you would expect, it also helps that I have an extensive library of code I’ve built over the years. As for the other 40%-20% of work, I do it as quickly as possible in hopes of trying to double or triple my normal hourly rate. Taking on projects like this and finishing them in a fraction of the time will really help increase your annual income and can even help push a developer over the $200k a year figure. Also this only works well when you can work remote because if you are expected to work on site and finish early, you can’t work on other side projects to make that extra money.

Salary

Again we are going to see a wide range of salaries. New York has two major kinds of clients: enterprise like banks, banks, and more banks or agencies. We really don’t have a lot of start ups here, and the ones we do have work you to death like an agency so I just consider anything “creative” an agency. On average you can easily get an entry to mid level developer position starting at around $80k a year. The highest salaries I have seen are around $160k for the best of the best. It is incredibly rare to make over $160k as a Flash developer alone here. The reason has to do with the fact that agencies need to bill you out at about 2 to 3 times your internal hourly rate. If you make over $100 an hour it would be hard to find clients who could afford $300 an hour to pay for you. I’m not saying it’s not possible mind you but I would imagine that only 1-2% of all Flash developers in NYC make over $160k. I am not going to factor in bonuses and commissions on work you may bring in since that is not solid income.

Also not to defend W2 over 1099 but you end up having an easier job, shorter hours (8-9 hours a day) and if you play your cards right can even pick up side work at night. For the past few years I have worked at a full time job and took on side work when I needed some extra cash or had some extra time at night. If you have a really good client base, you can easily make up the full time pay cut by simply putting in a few extra hours during the week and a day on the weekends. Part of being in New York is working yourself to death. Not everyone does it but by giving up a good portion of your social life, granted going out is super expensive here which I’ll cover later, you can invest your free time into earning more money to help save or use when you have downtime/vacation.

Taxes

One thing to keep in mind is that outside of the normal taxes you will pay, we have state income tax. This bit me in the ass my first year here. As a rule of thumb when I consulted I put away about 40% of my income to cover my taxes. This is a little excessive but I really got messed up my first year so I never wanted to be in that position again. The good news is that any extra money you don’t use for taxes goes into savings so it’s a good habit to have. When you work full time all of your taxes are taken out of your pay check. If you make things complicated by doing full time and freelance taxes get interesting so it is important to have a good accountant. When I do rough math on taxes I usually multiply the value by .65 which gives me a safe estimate of what you can expect to make after state and federal taxes. Also this doesn't account for deductions. I actually still do 1099 work so I can keep my deductions like buying computers and equipment.

Conclusion

New York City is one of the most amazing places you will ever see. It was always my dream to live and work here. My drive to succeed here is evident in the amount of time and energy I put into honing my craft. For those of you who follow me on twitter, you probably see I am always learning and experimenting with code and trying to push myself as hard as I can. I have loved living and working here and it’s thrilling to be a part of such an amazing place. Once you feel the rush of being successful in New York City, you will truly feel that you can make it anywhere!

When it came to getting back into making videos I contacted my good friends at Influxis who do Flash streaming video for a living. Here are some of the things they also suggested to make my videos the best the possibly could be.

Equipment:

Camera - I am using a Canon 5d Mark II. This is a really high end camera and I don’t expect many people to go out and pick it up. There are two reasons I got it. First is that it is a full frame camera so all my lenses get the full focal length and second it does amazing 1080p HD video. You could easily get away with a 7D or a Cannon Rebel which is what I used before I got the 5d.

Lens - Outside of the camera this is the most expensive part of the shooting with a SLR. I bought a Canon EF 24-70mm lens a few years back to do my regular photography and it’s excellent for doing video. When it comes to lenses I religiously follow this site’s suggestions.

Tripod - You will need to buy a special tripod to take your video. Most tripods only go vertical. I picked up a Vanguard ALTA PRO 284CT Tripod which allows me to put the camera directly over what I am filming. The important thing about picking up a tripod is getting one which allows you to add your own mounts. This will allow you to pick the right mount for your camera. As you will see in the photos below, when you mount the camera plus the lens and audio breakout box it gets very heavy. The last thing you want to do is break your camera because the tripod couldn't support the weight. Always make sure you get a solid tripod. The cheap ones may not be able to really support the weight or if you bump into it by accident.

Audio - Call me old school but I prefer Mics with XLR connections. Even though there are some really good USB mics on the market, having a pro mic makes all the difference. I use a Sure SM58-LC mic which is one of the best mics you can get at the price. B&H actually had a special with the mic, the stand and the XLR cable. Can’t go wrong with that. Next up is the issue that most camera don’t have XLR inputs. To get around this I use a ZOOM H4n recorder. I mount the ZOOM onto my camera with a shoe adapter and run the headphone out from the ZOOM back into my camera using a simple 3.5mm stereo extension cable. This insures that when I take the audio off the ZOOM, I can sync it up. Most of the time I can use the audio directly from the camera. The best part of the ZOOM is that you can also connect it to your computer via USB to do voice overs after if needed.

So this basically covers my equipment, here is a illustration of what the setup actually looks like.

Here you can see I have a clear surface on my desk with the camera positioned over a Samung Tab and a HTC EVO. Under the camera to the right is my mic so I can speak into it while I show off what is going on with the actual devices.

Here is a closer view of my setup. You can get a better idea of how the ZOOM is connected to the camera on top and how I wrap all the cords down the tripod to avoid tripping up in them.

This is usually my view when I am doing a video. The camera is out of the way so I can clearly speak into the mic and still have plenty of room to move around. It’s important to not touch or bump into the tripod while filming.

Here is a sample video done like this:

So lets talk about software.

When it comes to doing screen casts you will have a different setup. The good news is that you can us the ZOOM and mic to do all of your voice overs. Here is the software I use on the computer:

Screen Capture – I generally use a Mac for all of my recordings. I find ScreenFlow is the best app out there for taking videos. Not only is it reasonably priced (all things considered), but it is intuitive and has a decent editor built into. Also it allows you to do post effects such as highlight windows and zoom into the mouse. I used a lot of these advanced features on my Intro To Git Videos I did on Active Tuts. I am about to start doing screen casts on my PC so I will post about what I end up using.

Editing - I have used a few apps to do editing. It all depends on what I shot and how much work it needs. Most of the time I can get away with using iMovie or the built in editor in ScreenFlow. When I need to step it up, I usually take it into Final Cut. Most HD video needs to be work on in a pro editor. I also have a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 which I plan on giving a try.

So this just about covers the equipment I use to shoot all my videos. The other thing to keep in mind is to write a script and follow it. Being natural on video is a rare skill to have and one that takes a lot of time to perfect. Having a plan before going into film really helps cut down on your out takes and makes sure you stick to the topic. I don’t suggest winging screen casts because you end up rambling on accident and may need to spend additional time editing out dead space. Also watch your “ums” and “buts”. Make sure to take pauses in a way that allows you to edit them out later.

With a little bit of practice and a some direction you will be making videos like a pro in no time!

I thought I would share a modified version of my 40 page thesis paper to give a little insight into how I created FlashBum.com and to help show some of the process involved in creating a thesis for a masters degree. I was never a person who enjoyed school but in 2004 I was trying to rediscover who I was as an artist and still feeling the effects of the dot com bubble. While I went to school I also worked full time which gave me the extra support I needed to graduate and jump right back into the job market. It was incredibly difficult to balance school, work, and what little social life I had but looking back now it was one of the best experiences of my life. So And without further ado:

Introduction

“An artists has an obligation to be on route, to be going somewhere. There is a journey involved and you don’t know where it is and that’s the fun. So you’re always going to be seeking, and looking, and going, and trying to challenge yourself.”
-George Carlin

As an active commercial web designer for the past 6 years, I witnessed the rise of the web, in the mid 1990′s, the bursting of that bubble, and the bleak aftermath of the late 90′s Internet crash. Since the Internet crash, my field has changed dramatically, from plentiful high paying jobs to scraps of work that designers fight over or lose to outsourcing in India. Before I even finish a job, I have to begin looking for my next project or client. I haggle with clients for better pay, and solicit people wherever I go to make sure I have work for the next month. We are both trying to survive in a chaotic and violent environment, not sure what the next day may bring. By using this metaphor to shed light on the inherent problems with freelancing as a web designer, I hope to help others better understand the daily hardships of this profession as I see it.

FlashBum is Born

The idea of FlashBum came to me in January 2004 after living in New York for a year. After moving to the city and starting to work in a new environment I quickly became overwhelmed with trying to afford to live. The fear I began to develop of not being successful and the stress of competing in an over saturated market such as web design made me question my future and the direction my life was going in. At that time, I was ready to get out of web design and move into one of my other loves, video. I was talking to a friend and we were coming up with interesting ideas of how to market our portfolio for job interviews. I made the pun “Will Flash 4 Food” and FlashBum was created.

I thought it would be funny to dress up as a homeless person and instead of holding signs with words on it, you would just be holding photos of your work. I loved the idea of street advertising, like the people who wore suits with logos all over them and walked around the city. While brainstorming ideas on how to flesh this out, I did a few tests and considered using the idea for my SVA portfolio application. I knew I was onto something so I put FlashBum on hold to be worked on at a later date.

Historical, Theoretical and Cultural Context

Freelancers are quickly becoming societies throwaway working class. We have no health insurance, we are expendable, and made to feel completely interchangeable with others of our kind. There is no job security for a freelance designer! By using such a strongly recognized metaphor as homelessness, I hope to be able to communicate the transient and unstable nature of the freelancer’s life.
The Mocumentary and Popular Culture

The documentary film has been around since the dawn of motion pictures. The first movie was a documentary. Recently a new form of documentary has been emerging called the “mocumentary”. This genre combines the format, style and rules of the traditional documentary then adds in the absurd, ridiculous and the unbelievable to create a satire of the topic. The video part of Flash Bum will be shot in this mocumentary style.

In preparing my thesis, I have drawn inspiration from George Carlin, a comedian well known as a “Counter Culture Humorist.” Carlin has a very interesting outlook on humor, as well as censorship:

George Carlin

“Ohhh, some people don’t like you to talk like that. Ohh, some people like to shut you up for saying those things. You know that. Lots of people. Lots of groups in this country want to tell you how to talk. Tell you what you can’t talk about. Well, sometimes they’ll say, well you can talk about something but you can’t joke about it. Say you can’t joke about something because it’s not funny. Comedians run into that shit all the time… I believe you can joke about anything. It all depends on how you construct the joke. What the exaggeration is. What the exaggeration is. Because every joke needs one exaggeration. Every joke needs one thing to be way out of proportion.”

I happen to share in his belief. In the case of Flash Bum, I am taking my interpretation of freelancing and using an absurd exaggeration to twist it to an extreme portrayal of a “Homeless Web designer.” I am not using this concept to make fun of the homeless, but to accentuate the problems of being a freelancer by putting my character in an impossible situation. I am simply using the characteristics we, as an American Culture, associate with homeless people, and then applying them to my imaginary web designer. In Carlin’s show “Jammin’ in New York” Carlin also deals with the disenfranchised, and raises some interesting points about the poor and homeless of our country:

“Do you know how I describe the economic and social class in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes and does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep them showing up at those jobs.”

He also goes on to say:

“Do you ever notice there is no war on homelessness? No war on homelessness, you know why? There is no money in that problem! No money to be made off of the homeless. If you could find a solution to homelessness where the corporate swine and the politicians could steal a couple of million dollars each you’d see the streets of America clear up pretty god damn quick.”

In the Mock-Mentaries “This is Spinal Tap” and “Best in Show”, the director uses the standard documentary format to explore the fictitious stories of the movie’s characters. “This is Spinal Tap” follows the spiral downfall of an aging British Heavy Metal band during its last American Tour. The movie has had such a major impact on pop culture in America, that many people who listened to Heavy Metal in the 1980s can recall the band Spinal Tap even though they never really existed. The movie plays like a normal documentary, but throughout the movie running jokes such as the Drummer always dyeing and eventually spontaneously combusting hint at the joke this movie makes.

“This is Spinal Tap” Intro Screen

Originally, the writers Christopher Guest and Michael McKean never thought that people would be interesting in seeing a Fake documentary of an imaginary band. In Their next major movie, “Best in Show”, they take the same format but apply a more entertaining story to help attract an audience. The story is about four couples entering a dog show and exploring their backgrounds and motivations unfolds like any documentary, until you realize the absolute absurdity of the characters. There is never a moment where something impossible, which happens in Spinal Tap’s exploding drummer, but the shear comic performances of each couple give away the belief that it is real.

The movie “Dark Days” is a disturbing documentary on real homeless people who lived in the subway tunnels on the upper west side of Manhattan. I studied this movie to help add a little authenticity to the look and feel of my movie. Dark Days has a very stylized look and is shot on black and white 16mm film. Most of the shots are hand held and very low lighting. The haunting images of the characters dragging their belongings with them when they left the tunnels to search for food in trash cans was adapted into my filming. I also like the way locations shot, and the banter each of the characters had with each other.

Another interesting documentary was “Super Size” me. It took a culture icon such as McDonalds and directly attacked it. I was incredibly fascinated with the way facts were displayed in the movie to help validate the Directors point. I hope to incorporate this to show facts about web designers unemployment numbers, and maybe even some facts about homelessness in this country, showing how these two statistics relate to unemployed web designers.

“Super Size Me” McDonalds Customers Illustration

The BUM Engine

“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
-Pablo Picasso

To build FlashBum.com I had to develop a perspective engine from scratch. My inspiration was a site called www.billyharveymusic.com. I have always been fan of the sofake and when I saw what they were doing I was inspired. I have never seen anything like it before. The real draw to the site is how raw and handmade it looks, yet possessed a real technical sophistication that polished it. I immediately know this was something I had to learn how to recreate.

I began researching the technology behind the perspective engine sofake had created. In my reading and theorizing I cam across a source file on www.levetated.net called “Text.Space” (http://www.levitated.net/daily/levTextSpace.html). In this example I noticed how the word’s scale was being modified simply by one variable and the math behind the distortion was rather ingenious, yet simple. It was the launching platform I need and I quickly begin experimenting with pieces of the code. After a few weeks I had a prototype up and running with the basic functionality I needed

With a working prototype, I named the engine BUM (Bitmap Universe Manager) and began coding the functionality I needed from scratch. The underlying mechanics I based entirely on the billyharvymusic site. FlashBum version 1 was very primitive, buggy and incredibly slow. I began to realize that I had my work cut out for me.

My next version of FlashBum(v2) began to look closer to how I had originally envisioned the site. Instead of having floating pieces of cardboard I wanted to create a virtual floor that the user can move around in. Each object would have content on it and the whole experience would be more grounded in reality. Unfortunately I was not happy and I kept pushing the technology I was creating to meet the creativity I was having. By this point I have reached the end of my flash knowledge and I decided it was time to dive deeper into OOP(Object Oriented Programming) and AS 2.0.

In the Summer of 2005 I completely rewrote the perspective engine and ported it over to AS 2.0. This is how it stands today, broken down into several individual Classes (Self contained collections of Code) proving the backbone for the website’s unique 3d navigation. It is a working example of modern flash OOP in practice. Each piece of the code is self contain and completely customized. Not only can I power flashbum.com with this code, but I plan on using it on a lot of my other web projects. A big part of the whole flash bum experience is branding and marketing so when every I use the Bum Engine to build a website I will add my Bum Powered Logo to the bottom of the site.

Flash Bum Editor

Debug menu (left) main menu (right) file save window

Finally to aid me in my site design I created a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. You can drag and drop 3d objects onto the stage, fill out all of the details for the object, then place it anywhere in the 3d world you want. FlashBum consists of about 40-60 video clips and dozens of image so with this editor laying out each of the 6 locations will be a lot easier.

Duchamp and the “Ready Made” Found Object

Marcel Duchamp was one of the first artists to use found objects6 or “readymades” as the basis of his art. These objects are normal everyday things, taken out of context and then glorified as art. One of Duchamp’s most famous readymades was The Fountain7. The Fountain was a urinal which he signed “R. Mutt” instead of his own name. This piece was meant to be a joke and sent the art world in hysterics, ushering in a new era of “Low Art.”

Research by art historian Rhonda Roland Shearer indicates that Duchamp may have fabricated his found objects. If this was the case, then he may have made an even bigger joke of the art world then what was originally thought. The idea of taking simple and ordinary objects, then recreating them as art intrigues me. So, I thought of how I can use the concept of readymades in the context of my Flash Bum project. The process of creating the object in general lends itself to the creation of art, but to take simple, mundane objects we think nothing of and glorifying them in the digital realm. This is my intention with the Flash Bum website.

Borrowing from this idea, I will incorporate 3D “found objects” of my own design, such as cardboard signs, photo, pieces of paper, and other trash that are remnants of my character’s impression left in the virtual world. The website will document the character’s life and contain an interactive database of found objects. These objects will contain video, images, sound, and/or text to help illustrate my character’s life. They will also be able to be manipulated by the user/viewer, unlike real physical objects in a gallery setting.

3d Cardboard Sign Example

3d Cardboard iPod

3d Found Objects

Flash bum is not only a study in pushing flash technically, but it is also an exploration of user interactivity, data organization/presentation and interface design. The glue that holds the site together is in the “Found Objects” that scatter the website’s page. Each object has some relevance to the documentary and also following the tradition of using “found” objects as pieces of art.

Cardboard Front

Cardboard Back

The most prominent object is the cardboard sign. These objects offer a unique grouping of data since they are 2 sided. Each side a blank canvases for information. I have tried to have each cardboard sign follow a general template. The first version is a side with a hand drawn graphic or saying. This directly mirrors the signs I use in the movie. The second type has a photo or graphic taped onto it. These static graphics can illustrate a screen from the movie. The final type is a text box with a photo. These are best used for large blocks of text and can have an accompanying photo to illustrate the text. Each cardboard is randomly build from 7 different “themes” and will always look different every time you come to the site.

(Left) Photo Front (Middle) Photo’s Video (Right) Photo Back

The second most important object in the 3d word are the photos. These are digital snapshots from the documentary. These objects help tell the story of “The Flash Bum,” and move along the narrative. Each Photo contains a still image that represents the first frame (or Icon) of the video it will play. There is a label below the image that acts as the title of the clip. When a viewer clicks on the photo, it comes to life and plays out the clip. When the clip is finished, the still image icon fades in over the video and it returns to its original state. Finally the user can flip the photo over and read a description on the back.

Post Card Front and Back

Post Cards act as a form of communication with the user to their friends. These are used so send a person a direct link back to the section the viewer was last in. The big buzz word in the Web Design/Advertising industry is “Viral Advertising.” This is a virtual version of spreading something by word of mouth. The basic idea is that you create something that people share with their friends and eventually it spreads around the net with out the cost of expensive ad campaigns or traditional promotion. The post card directly allows people to send branded e-mails to other people with a link directly back to flashbum.com. The hope is that people who find this site entertaining will help promote it for me.

cPod Front and Back

The cPod is my take on the wildly popular iPod. This is such a cultural icon now and represents sleekness, perfect design, and finical status. In the Documentary my character talks about how he desperately wants to buy one but can’t afford it. I decided for the website I would create a cardboard spoof on the whole iPod idea. Also I borrowed the simple navigation of the iPod and I simulate inside of the cPod to help users navigate the website and also move between locations in the 3d world.

cPod Navigation Examples (left) Locations (right) Interactive Objects

(left) Napkin (right) piece of map Flair examples.

There are other objects in the 3d world that I call Flair. They are images that help add character to the world and also represent items from the videos/documentary. Some of these objects are napkins with website layouts, rip off pieces of map that show the user where they are, and images of street dirt and sidewalk cracks. These pieces of flair can container any image and I plan on using these to really help flesh out the look and feel of the website.

iSaArt

The type of art I create satires life, as I see it, here in New York and in other places I have traveled to. Lately, more of the art I create falls into a new genre of digital satirical art that is emerging on the web. I call this art “iSaArt”, Internet Satire Art. I feel that Flash Bum is a perfect example of this type of art. I take an absurd idea, such as a homeless web designer and bring it to life as a creative project. With the computer, I can create an entire world for this character and a means of distributing it to the masses.

Wefail.com is a great example of current iSaArt. Wefail.com is a spin off from sofake.com. They have several mini sites that make fun of the flash industry and the NET in general. The wefail turkey site ( http://www.wefail.com/turkey/ ) looks like a simple PowerPoint presentation but as you navigate and read text passages it becomes apparently clear that the site is really taking a stab at the flash/web industry.

http://www.wefail.com/turkey/ Screen

This type of humor, mostly seen in comedian’s stand up routines and comedy skit shows lends itself very well to the web. How else would you be able to get your views, opinions, and imagery out to millions of potential views without every having to pay for TV airtime?

Flash bum is my first real attempt at creating iSaArt. From the tone of the videos, the look and feel of the trash objects, and the basic premise of being a homeless web designer, flashbum.com is 100% iSaArt. By taking my fears of being a failed web designer, and picking something in our society that represents the lowest tier of our social order I am trying to shed light on how freelancers are treated in this web design industry.

Video Documentation of FlashBum.com

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed a deeper insight into how FlashBum.com was created and my inspiration behind it. Getting a master’s degree is a huge undertaking both in time and money. I don’t think it is necessary to have one in our field but the investment in yourself is priceless. One of the highlights of going to SVA was meeting Rich Shupe and Matthew Richmond of Chopping Block. They were a huge inspiration for me and it was amazing to be able to bounce my ideas off of them. I enjoyed my time at SVA but only because I made the most of it. The FlashBum project has become something much later then I thought it would and to this day, it is the best example of my full creativity as an interactive artist.

This post was originally written for InsideRIA and slightly modified for this site.

First off, when it came to art the message is the medium. When I had an idea I used several different artistic techniques to bring it to life. I found the right tool for the job. The same thing should apply to programming. The amazing thing about programming languages is that they are written to be as open ended as possible but that is also a limitation. You can’t make a sculpture out of oil paints, the two mediums allow you to do anything you can image as long as you stay within their limitations. Why shouldn’t programming be the same? The following thoughts are not meant to bash Flash, I love the language and will continue to make it my focus. I’m simply interested in and encourage others to step out of their comfort zone and explore as much as possible. Here is my plan:

If you only have a Flash Hammer, everything looks like a Flash Site

I am already starting to break down my first “Flash Can Do Anything” mental barrier. I am completely turned off to building full Flash sites now. I’m a strong advocate for hybrid html/flash sites. They are cleaner, easier to maintain and build. Plus you can avoid a lot of Flash’s pitfall such as SEO, deep linking, and Memory Management. Some sites lend themselves perfectly to being all Flash but by and large I rather mix HTML with Flash and use JavaScript as the bridge. The best part about hybrid sites is that you can use any backend language you want. I have a fairly good handle on CakePHP or Ruby is a great option as well.

I have also seen the same mistake made with CMS’s/Admin panels on sites. I would never build a CMS’s front end in Flash. That is crazy and almost impossible to maintain as the application grows in scope. Some may argue that is what Flex was designed to do but I would take a Hybrid CMS over a full Flash one any day of the week. I do believe modules that are too complex to be built in HTML/JavScript can be done in ActionScript/Flex.

My last point to this topic is mobile devices. Everyone is excited about Flash Player 10.1 on mobile devices but take a moment and think about what that experience is going to be like. Even Adobe has been very upfront that building mobile Flash sites with constrained resources, processor and memory will require lots of upfront optimization. You can completely circumvent this by building a hybrid site that works great across multiple browsers from mobile all the way up to desktop. Why build several versions of the same site when you can simply have the Flash parts degrade nicely into mobile optimized versions and still retain the html parts of the site on device that support full web browsing experiences. The iPhone, which has one of the largest demographic still does not have Flash player in it’s browser so you will have to take that into consideration.

I would love to hear your thoughts and if you want to also become a Renaissance Developer? In the end it is not about leaning as much as you can but just being a better developer. Each language has aspects that can be shared across platforms and it would be great if it makes me a better Flash Developer in the end. My money is still on Flash being the top of the pack for RIAs and the competition will hopefully make it a stronger platform and language.

This post was originally written for InsideRIA and slightly modified for this site.