At an impasse...

I've got something up and running that seems to be a very, very early prototype of the project. Right now, I'm just trying to get my Actionscripting up to fire code, so that I can program the darned thing how I want to. I can create the "stage", so to speak, wherein the items will be dragged and then animated. I can get them to do stuff once I drag them to the stage. All of this is good.

Here are my struggles:

I have to get someone to help me with the art. I am not an artist, nor do I claim to be. In my 6210 project, I was tagged as the graphic design person because I have a working knowledge of fonts and what not to do in regards to design, but that does not make me a practitioner of graphic design. I feel like my entire Studio experience has been pulling the wool over people's eyes, doing just doing enough to get by! That's an exaggeration, of course, and I'm probably being a tad self-deprecating, but sometimes I do feel that way. My roommate Kay is an artist, and I may get her involved. She seems willing to help, so that might work out okay.

I'm trying to decide whether to have the different elements--the couch, the blender, etc.--all dragged to a stage and animated immediately or dragged to the stage and the activated with the click of a button. I prefer the former, but the latter may be easier. Here's why: getting the music attached to each animation to sync up is going to be a real problem. Things could get really cacophonous if each sound file triggers separately. If all of the animations trigger at one time, then the sound will be fine, but I'll lose some interactivity. I like the idea of dragging and dropping musical elements to the stage in real-time to see how they work together. If there was a button, it wouldn't be as interesting to me. However, if I could find some way to export the created song to an MP3? Well, THAT would be quite interesting. Of course, that seems way beyond my powers. Like, way, way, way, WAY beyond...

Still trying to figure it all out.

My concept is fairly simple, but it seems complex to execute. Isn't that always the way? I want to create something called "The Musical House" in which the user drags and drops different elements to a "stage" (in this case, the visual metaphor would be one of a house, almost like a dollhouse), wherein these elements--say, a couch or a blender or some other element that would go in a house--would make noises that would eventually create music. Maybe a bed would make a squeaky sound or a microwave would ding or a spring in a couch might go boing. A TV could make static perhaps. The user could "dress" the house however they saw fit.

As one can plainly see, there is not a lot of educational content to this product. I can't figure out a way to get it to be educational, and I'm not sure it needs it. It just seems like something that would be fun to use. As I start programming it (and I'm currently boning up on my ActionScripting and testing some things out), I'm sure it might change and I might see a way to insert an educational component. Gizmos that are haphazardly instructional have always interested me. So much educational stuff out there is missing fun. Perhaps I could have each element represent a different note on the scale and all of it could be represented on a staff outside of the house. That might be pretty interesting, actually. I should type in this journal more often!

The beginning...

I've been toying with a lot of different ideas for my project, and I'm really having a hard time deciding, though it's probably about time that I just get going and start building the thing. I know that I want it to involve Flash because that's the software application I really want to learn the most. I'd also like the project to involve music in some form or fashion because that's just something that interests me. In particular, I'm interested in the concept of helping users create music without having to know how to play music. Learning to play music is like learning another language, and that can be a daunting task to a lot of potential music performers. If you get students/kids/whomever excited about the very notion that creating music or art is fulfilling then you can lead them into the direction of formally creating music.

The reason I took EDIT 6190 again, however, was partially to "let her rip," so to speak and do something creative and maybe a little lacking in a specific purpose. I'm attracted to projects that are educational by accident or as a by-product, the kind of instruction where the learners remark afterwards, "I just thought we were having fun!" That's a lofty goal, and plenty of software developers with more resources and experience than I do have failed at creating that kind of instructional material. This is the kind of thing I hope to do one day.

We'll see where this is headed...right now I have the idea of a dollhouse that can be populated with different musical objects like squeaky chairs, noisy blenders, and singing portraits. I see it in my head, but I have no idea how to get it to work on the screen.

Testing 1,2,3!

Hi. I am Lucas Jensen, and this is my new blog. I will be using this blog as my journal for the course EDIT 6190 at the University of Georgia.

This is my second time through the Studio, so I thought I might try something different for my journal entries this time around. I hope it works out okay. I'm pretty familiar with Blogger and the ins and outs of it. I tried to set up a Wordpress blog, actually, but apparently my email address is already in use for another blog, which I honestly can't remember creating (and can't remember the username or password either!). Oh, well. This shall have to do. Here is a picture of me right now:

I need to shave.