Diving Into the Deep End of the Pool and Swimming with Cross Dressing Orangutans:
A Intro/Retrospective Look at Two Flash Interfaces
Roger Altizer
Submitted to Dr. Cassandra Van Buren
University of Utah
Comm 5510: Advanced Web Design, Flash
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
This paper aims to cover the rationale, and process behind the two Flash projects I have created for this class, namely my unnamed personal site (herein referred to as ‘the personal site’) and the Lumberjack. I will briefly review the creative process of both projects as well as advance an argument, that being that they both represent aspects of my online persona. With any luck, the attitudes and values I wished to project are evident in my work, and the following elucidation will serve to cement these notions.
The first project I wish to review is my personal site. When originally conceived, the project centered on the following goals, it would a) serve as a professional portfolio site, which I could show prospective employers and colleagues, b) it would contain four major content areas, keeping it from becoming an online resume (though that would be one of the areas) and c) it would be cinematic, as defined and inspired by Manovich’s work (2001, 79-88). The theme or metaphor I came up with was that of a movie set. Action (interactive content) would take place on one section of the stage, then, as needed, the camera would pan to another area of the set where more action would be taking place. My motivation was two fold, I wanted to change the metaphor that drives most portfolio sites, and I wanted to create something with a bit more visual impact than an HTML portfolio site.
Hypertext (the backbone of most web pages) seems to revolve around the book metaphor (Manovich, 2001, pp. 73-78). Web pages are viewed individually, and users ‘turn’ to another page via hyperlinks. Of course, like all metaphors, the analogy breaks down in the end. Unlike books, users are able to search websites, take advantage of multimedia, and html offers a variety of interactive opportunities that are not afforded by static text. However, despite these advances, the driving philosophy behind many websites is still the same as printed text. Read a page, and then turn to another page.
My goal was to create a site that combined aspects of printed text with cinema. Instead of clicking to another page, users would be forced to only view one section of a page at a time. This forced perspective is similar to that of a director, you see through the camera what she intends you to see. At the same time, I wanted to project to be interactive, which is still keeping with the cinema metaphor though it is an aspect rarely used. One underused aspect of DVD technology is the ability to change camera perspective within a given scene. The idea was that viewers could experience the narrative that was crafted by a filmmaker, but at the same time, switch between different cameras, thereby allowing them some control. Unfortunately, it proved cost ineffective to shoot feature films this way, and so outside of experimental, or independent work, this feature is rarely used. It is an interesting concept, and one I decided to incorporate into my site.
As the project developed the visual theme changed, as did the content on the page. Being that I already have a professional online presence as the Video Games Guide for About.com, I decided that I would like to create something more personal, a place for me to share a more intimate look at myself, and to explore my personal self online. The structure of the site remained the same… but instead I focused on four personal, rather than professional content areas: a blog (short for web log, a type of online journal), a links page, a photo page, and a section for legal MP3’s. The section on legal MP3’s is of special import to me, as I am very interested in the idea of intellectual property, and the current debates that surround it.
I managed to achieve the cinematic effect I was looking for by creating one large set, or page, but limiting the users perspective to a quarter of it at any given time. I was therefore able to create four distinct scenes in different corners of the set. The user could navigate to whichever scene she wished, but her perspective had been set by me. She was able to craft her own experience, but from a limited number of perspectives.
Stylistically the site took a major twist when I decided to change the theme from professional to personal. Wanting to stay with free, legally obtainable materials, I was able to craft a background of water surrounded by tile. The idea was to allude to my love of water, and to my fond memories of public baths, or onsens, in Japan. In hindsight, think that the effect would have been more aesthetically pleasing had I set it up to appear more like a Japanese bath, and less like a pool. I wanted the tile and water to signify water, and bathing more than graphically represent it, but I think that it ended up being too much of a stretch, visually.
In contrast, the Lumberjack developed out of two different factors. The first being that my original concept of creating an interactive narrative (Manovich, p. 247) about an angry egg simply did not evolve the way I was hoping it would. Both technically, and stylistically, it simply needed more time that the current project allowed for. The second motivating factor was my admiration for Joel Veitch’s work at rathergood.com. Joel creates animated Flash shorts using a lot of bitmap images, which, in a way, separates him from the current Flash aesthetic of using vector images. Rathergood.com can be seen as the antithesis of Homestarrunner.com, in that on the Homestar site everything is vector, and polished so heavily that it shines. At the rathergood.com site, images are often jagged, poorly composed, and have an ‘edgy’ feel to them. Whereas Homestarrunner.com feels like a polished magazine, rathergood.com is more akin to an independent zine. In wanting to keep with the style of Joel Veitch’s work I decided to use bitmap images, for both the background and the characters, cut and paste an animal’s head atop a human’s body, and use a comedic song as the narrative device to tell a story. In the end I had an orangutan lumberjack singing the Lumberjack Song as performed by the British comedy troupe, Monty Python.
The selection of the Lumberjack Song allowed me to tie in aspects of Monty Python into the project as well. Monty Python skits combined absurdity with inappropriateness; the result was to tame the ‘offensive speech’ by tempering it with bizarre contexts and characters. It was hard to be angry at what they said when they wore dresses while doing it. Monty Python also had used animation in their work, in their animation characters usually slid across the screen and moved as if they had been cut out of a magazine, a sort of montage (pp. 155-160). Their mouths and body parts moved, but were always the same images, merely repositioned. I think that the style of animation on rathergood.com is reminiscent of this, and the fact that they are both British organizations leads me to wonder how much of an influence Monty Python’s work has on Joel Veitch’s animation.
The talking orangutan and the singing lumberjacks in my project seemed to reflect the influence of Monty Python, Joel Veitch, as well as reflect Manovich’s discussion of compositing and montage (pp.155-160). While their movement was more exaggerated than the characters on rathergood.com, they did have a similar feel to them. The use of the Lumberjack song¸ and the singing reflected the style that Joel has developed. Once started users can watch the story progress. At the end of the short, the user can choose whether or not she wishes to watch it again, by clicking the ‘again’ button, or can view the credits, which list the resources I used in creating the lumberjack project.
It is in the interactivity and the credits that I veer away from Veitch’s style of animation. His work, largely, has no interactivity. Additionally, while he does appropriate images from other websites, he does not credit them in his work or on his site. Keeping with the hacker / pirate / rebel culture his site caters too, this seems consistent. However, for the purposes of my project, I wanted to give credit and add some degree of interactivity. While I admire hacker culture, I am firm in my desire to credit artists and academics when I use their property.
The two projects are distinct in their style, purpose, and design. At the same time their author connects them. My interests, style, and values appear plainly in both of them. While the lumberjack project more blatantly shows my sense of humor, and desire to create conversation through uncomfortable topics (I think that the orangutan in lingerie was mildly disturbing for some), my personal site also shows my humor though my choice of photos and music, most notably the song by Senor Coconut. In my personal site I desired to not only display my personality, but also push what the boundaries of an individual web page should be. In the same way the lumberjack project pushes the envelope of comfortable Flash animation. The difference being that my personal site was guided by a metaphor outside of the web, cinema, and the lumberjack was inspired by the work of a specific artist, Joel Veitch. In the end I think both projects show overlapping aspects of my web persona, and work to test the boundaries of current web content.
Works Cited
Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT
Press.