Olliekoalas.com was a really fun and intense project. It was more of a promotional site then, as nobody KNEW what Ollie Koalas was in Jacksonville, and it had to be extremely enticing to kids.

This site was almost completely in flash, but still extremely lightweight and fast loading. Everything that could have been redrawn as a vector, was redrawn as a vector, art assets and fonts were shared so they only had to be loaded one, photographic images were all being pre-loaded during the appropriate lulls….a LOT went into this site.

However, if I was to do this site today, I would definitely make it more of a hybrid site. The SEO wasn’t great for Olliekoalas.com, and the updates were a beast. Flash deeplinking would be great, not just to re-enable the back and forward buttons on the browser, but also to create landing pages. An XML driven nav, and all XML driven content would also have helped in upkeep.

Overall, I’m still really happy with the site. It accomplished the goal of creating an experience that kids welcomed (and offered financial incentives for those kids to push their parents to go to Ollie Koalas), and completely killed anything Chuck E. Cheese had up at the time.

This really make me want to redo my current site into something more animation friendly…hhhhmmmmmm…

This is a little animation I did for all the gamers out there for Christmas this year. It’s a few days late…but aye…better late than never.

Mad props to Mafialligator for putting together and giving away such a great chiptune track Another Very 8-Bit Christmas rocks!

Anyways, lemme know what you think. Definitely open to suggestions and criticisms. Hopefully the next one will be much more professional and timely. If you have any requests or ideas, drop me a line in the comments below.

P.S. Major props to anybody who can name all of the characters in it.

P.P.S. Special shouts outs to a few gamers in particular…Robby1051, @videogamegirl, @guysgirl, Rich Rosado (your kindness at E3 inspired this), Raheem/Random/MegaRan (honestly debated putting Megaran in this….maybe next time), and all the kids in my classes this year (Ivonne, Klara, Justin, Jason, Sean, Kyle, Deb, Nina, Andrew, Breaker, Toni, Kareem,etc. .) You guys inspire me to stay on top of my game.

Flash AS3 Contact Form and Text Event Listeners

For those of you new to Flash who just want to knock out an AS3 contact form…here you go!

Once you download the file, you’ll notice you can use either 1) normal text fields or 2) UI components from the components panel.

There’s also ton of additional methods, properties, and event handlers commented within the file.

Lastly the code you’ll need for the php file, is commented within the file itself. Use that code to create a file called “mail.php” and 1) remember to enter in the email address you want the form to go to and 2)  remember where you upload it!

If you have any questions, hit me up in the comments below. Otherwise, download and enjoy!

http://bit.ly/flash-as3-contact-form

You want to make a button in flash using AS3? It’s easy!

1)MAKE SURE you’re movie clip has an instance name!

Also, please please please make sure you’re dealing with an actual “movie clip” and not a “button”.

The next step is to go to the Actionscript layer (you should have a layer label “actionscipt”, “as”, or something of that nature to hold all of your actionscript) and insert the following code:

instanceNameOfMovie_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, nameOfFunction);

function nameOfFunction onClick(event:MouseEvent):void

{

trace(“You just made an event handler to handle mouse click events!”);

}

And you’re done! You’ve made a movieclip that acts like a button with event handlers!

Now, some of you may ask, “Why not just use a button?”. The reason, the gives you more flexibility, and this is your first step in learning how to control event handlers. There may be times when using a button may be more appropriate, but for now, this is the way to go.

You can see a list of what other “Events” can be paired with the “MouseEvent” listener here. Experiment!

Football season is about to get going again, so what better way to get inspired than by looking at football based websites! (now that i think about it, there’s tons of better ways…hmmm)

Here’s what I like about this design.
1) It funnels you to either play the game, or sign up for the game
This may not be the “designer’s choice” way of how to design “Call to Actions”, but for a game that is relatively new that’s success as a company is going to depend on how many people are playing/sign up

2) Consistency in the UI
When you jump from the site to the actual game, there’s no jarring jump in terms of the look.

3) Well design psychologically pushes to the user
When i logged in today, here’s the first thing I saw

Yeah, yeah, there’s banner ads, but there’s also positive re-enforcement to be a return visitor. I got points just for logging in (much like how achievements work).
Also, notice that the colors or that area are different than the color scheme everywhere else in the site. SMART. I’m GOING to see this, hopefully come back, and then Quickhit has more returning visitors, to barter for more “Cash for Ads” from their advertisers.

There’s a ton more I like about this site (and the game itself! It’s awesome!), but I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy it for yourself.

Quickhit

I just can’t get this game out of my head…I’m practicing quater circles with my mouse….hitting the keyboard in chain combo fashion…tagging random people to start supercombos against babies…I can’t wait for this game!

Here’s some more wallpapers to ease the pain until it releases.:)

Updated iPad Wallpapers
Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 Full Collection

P.S What do you guys think about doing some PS3 and 360 themes? Yay? Nay? yanaynay?