Animation and interactivity in Flash: Case 1

My second attempt at drawing one raccoon character's face in Illustrator, while still struggling to make sense of the drawing tools in Flash. 

Usually when I draw a line, my hand is steady and the line appears exactly where I intend it to be. But in Flash there are some settings that by default value interrupt the normal drawing, misplacing the lines, oversimplifying them, making everything look badly Picassoesque, like one of those horribly grotesque figures on Cartoon Network. I'm still trying to remove the disservice in order to be able to make a simple drawing which is not totally incongruous with my will. 

Being completely new to Flash, I experience most buttons and terminology crowding the screen as counterintuitive. I don't know where to begin, and if I knew where to begin I wouldn't know what to begin with, inspite of paying a painful lot of attention to the lectures in school. 

I encounter the term “symbol”, both in the lecture at school and in the book "How to Cheat in Flash". In the book it says, on page ix: “Symbols have been around since the beginning and so has the behavior any symbol can have (Graphic, Movie Clip and Button).”  What?! 

This is worse than the riddle of the Sphinx. “What is it that walks on four in the morning, on two in the middle of the day, and on three in the evening?” That I can answer. But here I am expected to have congenital knowledge of what it is that behaves like a graphic in the morning, like a movie clip at noon, and like a button in the evening. The answer is allegedly “a symbol”. But what good is a symbol when I don't know what it means? 

The 329 pages long major thesis in visual communication, which I wrote, in large part deals with symbols. So I have some idea what the word symbol means, I'd think. 

Apparently not. 

I am currently on a quest, seeking to find what “symbol” supposedly means in Flash. God damn you, Flash! I kill you! 

If it weren't for ahiṁsā. 

I've been using Illustrator for 13 years now, so I'm fully familiar with the use of Bézier curves and control points of vector graphics in a 2D environment. Nevertheless I feel dangerously close to flush Flash back deep into the bosom of Tiamat, risking to have no career, no job, no future, just to have the sheer pleasure of seeing Flash's last fluttering flashes being engulfed by a black hole, where there is no escape; to have the miserably geeky software gasp for air (or whatever it is breathing) as it goes down the drain of total annihilation—to watch the last of its “o-so-cheerful” bubbles and ripples of superficiality on the surface subside—to have its interface smeared into the bottomless abyss, to make it lick the ground of existence, crushed underneath the foot of absolute vacuum, hauled back to before the existence of dust, and pulverized beyond singularity by the collapsing fangs of primordial Chaos! O merciful Mother of Darkness! I pray to Thee. 

What can I do? Being the archantagonist of degenerate humanity I can not expect help from deadly foes. I am doomed, I feel. If I was poignant and articulate I would know what to do. 

It'll probably all come to me if I only listen to some “Lady wannabe-Illuminati GaGa” or “illuminating blue Smurf's music”, the blues of today. Richard Wagner and Janis Joplin would be all so jealous of the pretty voices composed on game consoles by hunchbacked babies. Obviously the audible and visual arts go together. We are at the summit of human achievement, art reaching divine heights, I feel, seeing what magnificent figures we can draw in Flash. The deep meaning and sublime expression—it's like interacting with a higher power. The masters of the Renaissance would be amazed, astounded, if they could look into the future and behold the sparkling glory of us flies upon the shoulders of giants Flash before their eyes. With flies I refer mostly to myself. 

But before I succumb to ecstatic frenzy, I will try to pull myself together and poke this Flash dingus with my Wacom stylus. I haven't had proper sleep for several nights over this matter, and still I have no clue how to draw something in Flash that doesn't hurt my eyes or invert my abdomen. 

I see no other way than to do the sketches in Illustrator and have them imported into Flash. But how do I do that? 

It's 3:50 in the night and I must have the project idea finished with sketches and design of the main character this morning. “How do I start, not knowing Flash?” I have asked myself for a week. 

I have had mainly two ideas for the project, both which involve raccoons. One, which is currently too comprehensive, is to make an interactive constellation map. Since Flash is, as far as I am aware, mostly 2D oriented, I would make the two hemispheres as two circles. I'd place the Northern to the left and the Southern to the right, in a traditional manner. The two should be possible to rotate like cogwheels tangent to each other at the centre of the screen image. Their mutual meeting point is a bridge to the other side, where constellations spanning across the ecliptical division would part from and rejoin its other half as the wheels turn. It would be a major challenge for me to draw all the 48 classical constellations in a satisfactory manner and to also animate them and make them interactive. Also they all move together as the wheels turn. I don't even know if that is possible to program in Flash. And I have no knowledge about programming at all in any program. 

I would make the constellation The Great Bear (Ursa Major) into a Big Raccoon. I always wondered, as a child, why the celestial bear had such a long tail, while the terrestrial ones' seemed comparatively short. Now I've got it figured out. It's a raccoon! 

I would link the corresponding mythology, of different traditions, to the signs. For instance the Big Bear is also the Big Boar. It was the symbolic emblem of Sir Francis Bacon, the image of a hog being called the “Baconian signature”. The word boar is linked to the Latin word for north, Borealis, derived from Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. Ursa Major is a constellation seen in the northern hemisphere. In Indian mythology, the seven main stars of the part of Ursa Major called the Big Dipper are seen as representing the Seven Sages or Seers (Sapta-Rishi or Sapta-Ṛṣi), a group of Self-realised or enlightened beings who are constantly busy preventing humans from destroying this planet completely. Their wives are represented by the seven Pleiades. However, the Big Bear constellation has also been seen as a boar in ancient India. It represents both the White Boar (Śwetavarāha), symbolizing the current kalpa (time period of 4.32 billion years), as well as Varāha, the Boar avatār of Viṣṇu (or Prajāpati). Other avatārs are also represented in the sky, like the Tortoise (Kurma) in the north polar region, the Fish (Matsya), and the Horse (Kalki) represented by Pegasus (Sanskrit: Pagas). One time the lord Śiva turned himself into a cosmic pillar of fire. Brahmā and Viṣṇu were eager to check if there was a beginning and an end to the pillar. So Viṣṇu turned into a boar and dug down for aeons while Brahmā flew up like a Swan. Viṣṇu, the sustainer, couldn't find a beginning and gave up, admitting failure. But Brahmā, the creator, falsely claimed to have reached the end upon returning. Śiva punished him for the lie by deciding that Brahmā, creator of the universe, will not be worshipped in any temple. The swan that Brahmā turned himself into can be seen as the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. 

So I thought that this could be my project, to make an interactive map with animated constellations. But there is no way I would even get to the beginning of it with my current skills. I rather wait with this pet project until I have mastery of 3D-modelling. 

So what can I do in Flash? Currently nothing, without serious help. But my other idea, also including raccoons, is a game somewhat similar to the ones done by other students before. Risking to be kicked out of school and lynched by the group and the rest of society, I was thinking about making a game that is not about killing. But it is supposed to be about something as outrageous as mercy and conscience. How cool is that‽ A team of raccoons disguised as an aristocratic goddess or vice versa, that is an aristocratic goddess working under cover as a team of masked raccoons, with perhaps a washing/cleaning company as cover operation, is rescuing enslaved animals from human captivity, saving them from torture, execution, inbreeding, mutilation, monstrous experiments & cetera.

The raccoons, who like to wash things, are skilled in martial arts, having practised the discipline of "wash on, wash off" for months (as paralleled by the “wax on, wax off” of “Karate Kid”). The raccoon heroes find animals awaiting rescue and liberation from factory farms, butcheries, animal testing laboratories, circuses, etc. The raccoons are possibly skilled scientists, and get extra points in the game when they are able to restore the mutilated DNA of pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens to a normal and natural, healthy state. The raccoons acquire occult powers (siddhis) during the game, that enable them to work such miracles.

Wolves kill bad or faulty DNA, something farmers have a hard time understanding. Sheep are not supposed to be blond and stupid, pigs and hens are not supposed to be overweight. Inhuman, degenerate humans made them that way, because of greed and the inability to relate to the suffering or wellbeing of others, which is very cruel I think. They have distorted natural evolution in the most perverse manner. The wolves too are becoming severely inbred due to man's ignorance. Predators of Nature take out the individuals with unfit hereditary qualities, which would develop to more and more disease and disabilities, and thus much suffering. Humans select in the opposite way, killing the healthiest individuals and keeping as many of the worst genes as possible. When they see someone who is beautiful, healthy, strong, and magnificent they want to destroy them—cut their head off and put it on a wall—proud to destroy everything that is beautiful, ripping away the body, life, and joy of their neighbour. They also kill the seed of compassion, as the Buddha said. Now, sadly, one shall never trust a human. They give you food, pretend to care for you, and then they stab you in the back. They make slices of your neck, they rip out your guts and fill them with your grinded body. They take your newborn child, open his belly, take out the lining and put it in your breast milk that your beloved baby was going to drink to grow up strong and happy. They call it cheese, and they smile and laugh. The J. C. is symbolically the pure and innocent lamb, brutally sacrificed at Pesach (Pesaḥ) or Passover by the humans. Similarly, the scapegoat is killed, blamed for the evil doings of the humans, when the evil done is the very killing. And … “God said, Who told you to kill the bullock and the she goat to make an offering to me? Wash yourselves from this innocent blood, so I may hear your prayer; otherwise I will turn my head away because your hands are full of blood. Repent yourselves so I may forgive you.” (Isaiah 1:11-16)

So, this is the background for the great struggle on the Hero's journey for the little baby raccoons. The raccoons fight for the liberation of slaves and victims of abuse and molestation. They also help tender-minded humans in difficult situations, whenever they can. Raccoons also have the ability to unlock locks of cages, and to open safes. They have good hearing and can remember combinations.

After having cracked the code and successfully opened a safe, recorded by hidden camera, raccoons have been filmed while subsequently dismantling the lock altogether using peanut butter and extreme dexterity. In good faith, some raccoons of real life also opened all the cages of all the other animals at an animal shelter. These animals were of course there to be treated for injuries from human abuse or were orphaned by hunters etc. The animals were being rehabilitated and would eventually be released. But the little raccoon children didn't know and just wanted to free them. 

Not being as skilled as a raccoon, I wonder how I shall be able to make an entire game when I can't even make a simple drawing in Flash. Time is 6:55 in the morning, and I still haven't slept. 

At least I managed to draw in Illustrator and import to Flash. But I need to have the settings right, so that I don't get help from Flash with my drawings.