Flash Animations

Flash animations are really slick. With Flash, you are able to have many moving components with a small file size. The best thing about Flash is that the movements are smooth. This puts Flash animations way ahead of animated GIFS which can have jerky or staccaco-like movements. The only downside to Flash animations is that you need a Flash player to installed on your computer to see them. The good news is that the player is a free download and you can get one here. If you have a newer computer, probably have the player already installed.

Slide Show Made in PS

I created a a slide show in Photoshop. It is a just a demo that shows how, if you are creative, you can design something that looks like a PowerPoint presentation. The advantage of this is that you can export it to a Flash file and it run beautifully on the web. The slide show features my favoite cars of 1957. If you'd like to see it in action, click here.

Silent Animations

• Glitter
• Basketball Boy
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• Oscilloscope
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• Draw-Color a Baby
• Statue
• Eagle in a Sphere
• Penguin On Ice
• Jack in the Box
• Smiley Devil
• Glitter

Animations with Sound

Files with an '*' are windows media videos. Left click on them to download.
• Jealous Teddy Bear*
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• Jack's phone message*
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• Another Jack phone message*
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• K Hepburn phone message*
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• S Temple phone message*
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• WC Fields phone message*
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• Talking Art
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• About Me
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• Nothing
• Ask not...
• Happy Birthday
• Tough Duck
• Jack the Lion
• A Portrait Talks
• Fool Me Once
• Poor People
• President George (Dagwood) Bush
• New X-Files
• Kiss Me!!!

My Animations

I call this animation "Bobblehead." It was made by manipulating a photo of Sarah Palin. For me. the art of animation is fun. In fact, I would say that it is so much fun for me that I create it with a smile on my face. Getting images to move and presenting an illusion to the audience are just two of the facets of animation that I enjoy. There are two broad categories of animations that I have created: animation with and without sound. Click on a link on the right to view these animations. Please note that some of the animations with sound require that you have a player installed on your system. If you click on one of them, the installation program will come up automatically. Click on run to install. It is safe to do so as the player has been examined for any viruses--it is clean.

They are 3 types of animation in the two categories (with and without sound).

1. Flash Animations

Flash animations are the newest type of the animations dicussed here. One advantage of them is the ability to program sophisticated movements and present an illusion to the audience. Another advantage is that the file size is small making complex movements run smoothly without taxing the limits of your system. See the column on your left for more information on Flash.

2. GIF

Do you remember when you were younger drawing pictures of, e.g., a man walking on the edges of several book pages and then flipping those pages to see the man walk? Well, that is how a GIF works, There are several frames that show different stages of movement, and then using a GIF animator to 'flip' them. The more frames, the smoother the motion and the bigger the file size.

3. Animations with Sound

Animations with Sound (in the case of the examples in the column to your right, speech) can be made in different ways. In essence, you take an image and trap the pixels around the mouth and synchroize their motion to a wave file. This can be done as a FLASH or video animation. It is really fun to do. albeit a tad tedious. See if you can identify who provided the wave (speech) files in samples to the right. They are all from famous people and have been synchronized to mouth movements of toys, critters and evem paintings. I hope youu enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed creating them.