So I had my first Flash class this week at UCLA. I must be getting older than I thought, ’cause I don’t remember three hour classes being that exhausting.
But anyway, the homework assignment is to plot out the final project. Personally, I think it’s a bit soon to be thinking final project when it’s only the second week and I’m still not 100% certain how much we’ll be able to learn in the next three months, but fortunately, I have my boss helping me out. He’s a Flash expert, so he sat me down and wrote out a list of the different elements he thought were essential to learn, and which therefore should be included in the project. Coming up with an actual cohesive project, though, was a bit harder. We got a little grand in our brainstorming, actually getting as far as plotting a subsite for the Gtty with about 150 pages, until we came back to earth and realized that probably wasn’t the best route to go for a class project. So now our broader goal is to come up with a small, 3-5 page project where I can load as many of his list of elements as possible, just so I can learn the basics first.
My preliminary list so far includes:
+A mock website promoting our web department as a separate web company (I say mock, because in my mind, it would be very snarky, with subtle jabs at the things our client departments do that make me insane)
+A redesign of JaneEspenson.com, which would be extremely useful, since it hasn’t been redesigned in oh, three years or so, but that means I’d have to focus on design as well as function, which is harder since I’m so not a designer.
+A photo album application for polgara.net, except that seems rather limiting in how many elements I can include.
+A redesign of pmcarlson.com, which currently sucks a lot and I basically ignore it, mostly because I just don’t know what to do with it.
+A website for my kickboxing dojo.
+A website for a knitting store (doesn’t really matter which one, it would just be an exercise).
I was leaning towards the Jane redesign, so I could have something shiny and new in time for the premiere of The Inside, but unlike most of my sites, my Jane site actually has an audience, so I have to consider their feelings on the matter, especially since so far at least one person has declared an abhorrence for all-Flash sites. And she makes a good point, since there are a couple of news sites that check in every once in awhile and it’s probably more useful for them to be able to link directly to certain pages, like the News page. So just like that, now I’m leaning away from the Jane site for this project. *sigh*
This is the hard part. I fear not the coding, but the conceptual stuff? Ugh.