WORKS: Flash Assignment

If you would like to view my flash assignment, please click here. It's hosted from an external website.

Artist's Statement
"Pandora & Her Box"

Pandora & Her Box was inspired by Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. In Gorey’s (rather morbid) chidren’s book, he goes through the alphabet in rhyming couplets about how 26 children meet their fate. This is the reason why most of the drawings are in greyscale, I wanted to embody the same feeling Gorey gives off in his work. My basic concept was to create a story with a girl and her mishaps with a mysterious box. The title, Pandora & Her Box, came as an afterthought, alluding to Pandora’s box of evil. In this interactive, a stranger leaves a box at the girl’s doorstep. She opens the door, bring the box into her home, and tries to open it. However, the box reacts very unusually, but she is persistent in her attempts. Eventually she opens the box, which contains a whirling vortex, in which she is sucked into. She falls empty space and finds herself face to face with the box once again.

The target audience for my work is children 10 or under. The interactive is filled with buttons and goofy sound effects. I believe children would enjoy this interactive because of its cartoonish nature and simplicity. The humour used is understandable on a low level, which means an audience of any age could understand.

The program used for this assignment was Adobe Flash CS3. This program was used for all the motion and interactivity. To draw the objects in the piece, I used a Wacom tablet. This helped achieve the handdrawn effect with accuracy and without being incredibly time consuming. All sound effects are from the royalty free library at RCC.

The biggest challenge of this project was dealing with errors in Flash. On more than one occasion, the program “unexpectedly quit” and all progress was lost. Another difficulty was trying to figure out what was wrong with the action script which disallowed the buttons from working properly. This was the most frustrating and time consuming above all other tasks.

By doing this project, I learned how to use a new program and I now have a stronger appreciation for those involved in animation. One must have a lot of patience and strong logic skills to piece together a successful interactive animation. Although I feel like I could’ve improved on my original concept, I believe my piece is successful in portraying my original concept. The project was a challenge but seeing the end result is rewarding.