WK3 - DynamicDrive 'insanity'
Week three's assignment - incorporating scripts from dynamicdrive.com into some crazy work of ours - proved to be a surprisingly time consuming pain-in-the-ass task. Although it brought some joy, it also brought a lot of hatred, and hurting. At the moment I haven't got my four pages uploaded somewhere, but I'll work on that one later...
First off I got straight into the 'Cherry Blossoms' page. As soon as I saw the 'Autumn Leaves' script (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex3/leaves.htm), I had this idea. Nothing says Japan like falling cherry blossoms. This one was the easiest, and probably the nicest looking because of this reason. The harder things got, the simpler they looked. I whipped out Photoshop, threw a picture of a Japanese temple on a hill with some trees, easy done. Next I drew up some cherry blossoms in ratio to the autumn leaves on dynamicdrive.com and saved them in relation to the script. Then it was simply throwing the temple pic into Dreamweaver, pasting the script in, and hey - worked first time, like a charm.
Second was the 'Changing Bodies' page using the 'dragable elements script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/image3.htm). When I came across this the first thing that it reminded me of was those kids mix-and-match the clothes things, so I went with it. The first crazy thing I could think of was a man and a chicken (imagining what a man's head on a chicken looked like made me laugh). Again, Photoshop helped me produce a smiley man's head, body, and boots, as well as a chicken head, body, and feet. These seemed a little raw by themselves, so I added some wigs. Again, Dreamweaver, copied in the pics, then the script. Now it all worked fine straight away bar one problem - the pics had some sort of layering preference. The head was behind the body and all sorts of crazy things. It turned out the order that the images first appear on the page determines this, so I just had to figure out which images went in first. Easy.
Now, third was 'Spiderman'. This is where the example of a hard script led to a simple product. Initially spiderman was to be flying across the page with numerous villians flying after him, with a giant web following the cursor around as if to suggest Spiderman was really flinging around the page. It was to be my greatest html feat. But alas, it was not. The idea came from first seeing the script 'Spider web link effect' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex5/spider.htm). Copying and pasting this into a blank html page proved to be effortless. Next I needed a spiderman, so I went to the cursors page and found the 'custom cursor script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/customcursor.htm). Grabbing a pic of spidey from my archive of useless pics, I cropped him up and saved him as a gif. This wasn't good enough, needed to be a .cur or .ico, so here followed a search for programs that could achieve this for me. 'Any2Icon' was trial-downloaded, and I had a .ico of spidey. The html page was not happy to have both the web effect and the custom cursor on at the same time - the web was flickering in its appearance, and the icon was not only thrown heavily out of proportion but was disapearing and reapearing spontaneously. Image size restrictions was the biggest problem here, so some time later I found the 'image trail script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex13/trailer.htm). Although this one should have less size restrictions, it proved to be even more problematic (the pics trailing were meant to be of spidey and his enemies btw). Not only did this script not work with the web effect, it didn't work at all. It only resulted in a group of pics stuck in the corner. Last I found the 'Elastic band trail' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex13/band.htm) which was ultimately the used script. It didn't agree with the web effect either, so the web was frustratingly scrapped, and instead the page was left with a bare spidey flinging around the page. Ergh. (Note - the image used to be a much cooler, colourful pic of spidey, but the elastic looked like it was originating from a strange place from his body...; Now I never want to see Spiderman again)
Last, with the last ounce of html editing energy, I made 'Chicken shooter'. After finding the 'document crosshair script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex13/crosshair.htm), a shooter of some sorts was the obvious first thought. seeing as though my energy was spent, I recycled my body changing chicken into a flock of chickens, crammed them into a webpage, and hotspotted all of their faces. For the linked page that they all led to, I quickly threw together a dead chicken in Photoshop, put it into it's own html, and hey presto. Add some crosshair script to both pages and shoot away. Also, like 'Cherry Blossoms', looked nicer than the others because it was problem-free. Phew.
Fin. (I don't really hate you Spiderman)
First off I got straight into the 'Cherry Blossoms' page. As soon as I saw the 'Autumn Leaves' script (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex3/leaves.htm), I had this idea. Nothing says Japan like falling cherry blossoms. This one was the easiest, and probably the nicest looking because of this reason. The harder things got, the simpler they looked. I whipped out Photoshop, threw a picture of a Japanese temple on a hill with some trees, easy done. Next I drew up some cherry blossoms in ratio to the autumn leaves on dynamicdrive.com and saved them in relation to the script. Then it was simply throwing the temple pic into Dreamweaver, pasting the script in, and hey - worked first time, like a charm.
Second was the 'Changing Bodies' page using the 'dragable elements script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/image3.htm). When I came across this the first thing that it reminded me of was those kids mix-and-match the clothes things, so I went with it. The first crazy thing I could think of was a man and a chicken (imagining what a man's head on a chicken looked like made me laugh). Again, Photoshop helped me produce a smiley man's head, body, and boots, as well as a chicken head, body, and feet. These seemed a little raw by themselves, so I added some wigs. Again, Dreamweaver, copied in the pics, then the script. Now it all worked fine straight away bar one problem - the pics had some sort of layering preference. The head was behind the body and all sorts of crazy things. It turned out the order that the images first appear on the page determines this, so I just had to figure out which images went in first. Easy.
Now, third was 'Spiderman'. This is where the example of a hard script led to a simple product. Initially spiderman was to be flying across the page with numerous villians flying after him, with a giant web following the cursor around as if to suggest Spiderman was really flinging around the page. It was to be my greatest html feat. But alas, it was not. The idea came from first seeing the script 'Spider web link effect' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex5/spider.htm). Copying and pasting this into a blank html page proved to be effortless. Next I needed a spiderman, so I went to the cursors page and found the 'custom cursor script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/customcursor.htm). Grabbing a pic of spidey from my archive of useless pics, I cropped him up and saved him as a gif. This wasn't good enough, needed to be a .cur or .ico, so here followed a search for programs that could achieve this for me. 'Any2Icon' was trial-downloaded, and I had a .ico of spidey. The html page was not happy to have both the web effect and the custom cursor on at the same time - the web was flickering in its appearance, and the icon was not only thrown heavily out of proportion but was disapearing and reapearing spontaneously. Image size restrictions was the biggest problem here, so some time later I found the 'image trail script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex13/trailer.htm). Although this one should have less size restrictions, it proved to be even more problematic (the pics trailing were meant to be of spidey and his enemies btw). Not only did this script not work with the web effect, it didn't work at all. It only resulted in a group of pics stuck in the corner. Last I found the 'Elastic band trail' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex13/band.htm) which was ultimately the used script. It didn't agree with the web effect either, so the web was frustratingly scrapped, and instead the page was left with a bare spidey flinging around the page. Ergh. (Note - the image used to be a much cooler, colourful pic of spidey, but the elastic looked like it was originating from a strange place from his body...; Now I never want to see Spiderman again)
Last, with the last ounce of html editing energy, I made 'Chicken shooter'. After finding the 'document crosshair script' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex13/crosshair.htm), a shooter of some sorts was the obvious first thought. seeing as though my energy was spent, I recycled my body changing chicken into a flock of chickens, crammed them into a webpage, and hotspotted all of their faces. For the linked page that they all led to, I quickly threw together a dead chicken in Photoshop, put it into it's own html, and hey presto. Add some crosshair script to both pages and shoot away. Also, like 'Cherry Blossoms', looked nicer than the others because it was problem-free. Phew.
Fin. (I don't really hate you Spiderman)
posted by Dane at
7:04 pm
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