3 posts tagged “resource”
VECTORTUTS brought to you by
PSDTUTS is a great resource for those of you who are in need of Illustrator
help. Much like PSDTUTS, the site has tried and true tutorials with loads of
tips and tricks that even the savviest user could benefit from. When I personally
tested out one of the tutorials, I was amazed at how it broke down complex
illustrations into steps that I could understand and grasp quickly. It gave me
the tools to be able to create illustrations with simple shapes and shading
techniques. Even if you’re not a talented illustrator, you could pull off
realistic Illustrator drawings by knowing how to implement these techniques. There
were a couple of points I felt needed improvement. For example, the tutorial
asked the user to choose a few different shades of yellow without citing the exact
Hex number. Missing crucial color information can really change an
illustration!
Regardless of your skill level, I highly recommend trying out one of the tutorials, even if it’s just to practice your Illustrator ninja skills!
- C. Lin
Photoshop can be, at times, cumbersome with each new
edition, although this is not to say completely futile. What commences
as a brief look into creating conceptual art, culminates into an
exceptional discovery. PSDTUTS.com
is anything
and everything Photoshop related. Lessons range from applying realistic
tattoos, retouching facial imperfections, creating conceptual art,
building seamless collages, fine tuning techniques of illustration, to
making rad text effects. PSDTUTS is not only a prime
resource for Photoshop tutorials, but it is also an online community
where readers have the opportunity to suggest topics and even write in
for paid publishing on the site. Definitely a hot resource right now.
- B. Juergens
Everybody loves a good countdown! Flash designers and developers especially love a countdown of the best open-source Actionscript projects. The term “best” is a squishy amalgam of the measures of community support, design and technology, application in the real world and overall usefulness. Visit OSFlash, the de-facto hub for open source flash projects, to see more about these projects and many, many more that are terrific but didn’t make the cut for this countdown.
10. FLVTool2
http://www.inlet-media.de/flvtool2/
The Flash 8 Video Encoder is the only encoder that creates reliable
cue-points in flash video files. Sorenson Squeeze (and others) encode
smaller files with much higher quality. What do you do? Manipulate your
FLV’s metadata after encoding with this simple but effective tool.
9. Xray
http://osflash.org/xray
A “snapshot viewer” of the current state of a Flash application. You
can get instant information about every object, every property, with
little to no impact on the application itself. While some may find it
slightly complicated to setup initially, once you have it running it
becomes an indispensable debugging tool.
8. Actionstep
http://www.actionstep.org/
A complete replacement for the buggy, poor quality V2 components in the
Flash IDE based on the thoroughly documented
NextStep/OpenStep/GNUStep/Cocoa “Application Kit”. If you are
developing Flash projects in an entirely open-source environment this
is a solid choice for components considering that Adobe’s license does
not permit the use of its components without a licensed copy of the
Flash IDE.
7. AFLAX
http://www.aflax.org/
Combines Ajax and Flash to give JavaScript access to Adobe’s Flash
runtime— including graphics, networking, video and camera support,
without ever using the Flash IDE.
6. SWFMill
http://www.swfmill.org/
A command line XML to SWF to XML processor using SWFML, an XML dialect
closely modeled after the SWF format. Compile asset libraries with
images and fonts or even complete SWFs wtih SWFMill and MTASC.
5. AsUnit
http://www.asunit.org/
The only open source unit test framework that supports AS 2.0 and 3.0
development without binding you to any particular development tools. If
your projects are complex enough to merit unit testing, AsUnit with its
platform independence, Flash IDE integration and Mozilla XUL UI is the
obvious choice.
4. FlashDevelop
http://www.flashdevelop.org/
An AS 2.0 and 3.0 script editor built on .NET (so it is Windows only,
sorry!). It’s quick and painless to setup and very easy to use with low
overhead as an external editor for the Flash IDE or as a complete open
source development environment. With features like seamless SWFMill and
MTASC integration, AS 3.0 syntax checking, AS 3.0 & MXML
completion, and Flex2 compiler integration, it’s truly a powerful
development environment with no hassles.
3. Eclipse
http://www.eclipse.org/
Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform built with Java— an open
extensible IDE for anything at all. I use it as the universal
development environment for writing everything, Actionscript, XML,
XHTML, Javascript, PHP. It’s open architecture, long development
history, massive contributor list and status as a sophisticated, mature
product makes it the development environment of choice for countless
developers in dozens of languages. In fact, it’s so good Adobe
FlexBuilder2 is built directly on top of it.
2. MTASC
http://www.mtasc.org/
Without question, the worlds best Actionscript compiler: immensely
extensible, lightning fast and very scriptable. Many of the other
projects on this list depend on MTASC for compiling.
1.Fuse
http://www.mosessupposes.com/fuse
The most robust and efficient AS 2.0 tween engine in the world, an
animation sequencer with highly compact, legible syntax, very easy yet
powerful handling of Flash 8 BitmapFilters and the ability to tween any
numeric property of any class, not just MovieClip. Were this list
broken down by types of merit, this project would be near the top for
technical achievement, application in the real world, and number one
for usability and practicality. I honestly don’t know how I ever lived
without Fuse. It was also recently announced that Fuse would be rebuilt
from the ground up for AS 3.0. Woot!
What does “open source” mean anyway?
Open source is a buzzword that is often misused today. Open source is more than just accessible source code. Open source projects by definition should follow the following guidelines (abridged from http://opensource.org/docs/osd):
- The code should be freely redistributable as part or a larger project. Nobody should be restricted from giving away or selling products built with or on top of it.
- The project must include editable, freely accessible, freely downloadable source code.
- Anyone may create a derivative version of the project and they may redistribute it under freely. If the license does not allow modifications of the original source code it must allow “patch files” to modify it at build time.
- No person, group, field of work can be discriminated against. Literally anyone can use and modify an open source project.
- The software license must be independent of any particular product, technology or development style. It must take an absolutely neutral stance on how it is used.
