I recall now a dinner with a colleague. We were dining on a variety of common flora; the leaves and sprouts were arranged in a delicate balance on a plate, and each plate was topped with ‘dressing’. “It is a salad” said my guest. “They are a customary introductory smattering, usually served before, or adjunct to a main course.”

“Yeah, so? I’ve had salads, dude. Why are you getting all David Attenborough on my dinner?” I said.

Our topics of conversation varied wildly that night, no regard given to tasteful segue or humorous diversion. We nestled, finally, among talks of sports. The horrific grunge of spandex; gyrating on a field of grass soiled with painted lines and numbers, the un-ending boredom and eventual prayers for my own sudden death that accompany watching even one inning of Baseball, bags of peanuts.

After we’d satisfied the need to self-congratulate ourselves on our status as sophisticated intellectuals, we began inventing new games – games that, in our view, would be interesting to watch.

Harold Thunderbottom (names have been changed) asked if I’d ever seen a game called ‘Hero’s Frisbee’.

“No, but the name does pique my interest…”

“It’s a lot like regular frisbee, except instead of a frisbee, there’s a puppy, and instead of throwing it around, you toss it in a tub filled with pudding…and watch it freak out.”

There are times, even if a joke isn’t funny, you have to credit the person when their delivery is flawless; convincing, straight-faced, well-endowed with interesting words and phrases.

His non sequitur was presented well – no smirking. An eavesdropper may have believed that such a game exists, in fact. But no one bad-talks puppies at the supper table when I’m around. No one.

I stared at him for a few moments, signaled the waiter, paid my bill, stood up, walked outside, looked at the Starbucks across the street, reflexively died a bit inside as I mourned for the future of humanity, sighed, went back inside, and sat at my seat.

I’m telling you this not because I’m about to reveal

The Official Rule Book For Hero’s Frisbee: Chihuahua Edition

With a foreward by Michael Vick.

…but because I’m waiting for a project to render in After Effects. I only use After Effects when I need to do some actual video editing, or more involved transcoding – everything else, in my world, can be done in Flash when I just need a 60-frame video for a banner – or even a short promo spot / intro. And I’m talking like ten times per year, at most.

But here I am, four hours into a render. I can taste it…that sweet chime sound is right around the corner.
Unless I get a blue screen first.

EDITORS’ NOTE: I’ve switched to Mac since this article was written. PRAISE ME.

What I’ve been summoned here by the devil to write about today is this: Flash development.
The forward-thinking Web Designer snob inside me knows that Flash development should never be your first choice for web design – and it’s rare that I get a client that demands the fanciest, craziest site they can possibly get. But I’m working on one of those rare treats this month, and lemme tell you….

It’s fun. I’ve had an epic first week – going back to my roots in animation and Flash development.
Instead of thinking things to myself like:

“It’d be nice to see each icon as a different color with independent hover states. Cool – lemme just asign psuedo-classes to everything, or maybe div everything up – how many bytes will that add? – , then make sure the styles are cross-browser compatible

EXCEPT IE6 – DIE YOU EVIL TIME DRAINING JERK BUTTHEAD WEINER FACE BOOGERNOSE

and maybe I can add a hover-state ease-in ‘glow’ in a dark red – like BE0000* – what’s the -moz-transform? How about the Microsoft markup? Oh right – DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix.

OF COURSE THAT’S WHAT IT IS. WHAT SILLINESS HAS POSSESSED ME TO FORGET SUCH A LOGICAL AND NOT-STUPIDLY COMPLICATED STRING OF CHARACTERS…

I can do this:

I’d sure like to make their logo materialize out of light particles, then fly off the screen, and have XML power their slogan so they can change it later. And then i do it,

LIKE WOAH SON THAT’S MAD QUICK.

And then it’s done, and a single tear of elation streams down my supple man-cheek.

Once you’re responsibly deeplinking everything, providing xml data and a sitemap, and remembering crucial steps, like creating a simple, fast-loading html and css-powered mobile site, Flash does give you many creative freedoms.

The developer side of me cringes in horror, as the designer side twirls in delight like a fancy nancy.

*That’s a nice deep red, right? I’m not gonna confirm it. Only tell me if I’m right.

Welp, that’s all I got right now. The video just finished rendering. It’s pretty sweet. Once the project is done, I’ll post a link to the Ra Design post about it here.