TROM Prologue

Chat about creative work on other sites
Shane
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Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2001 9:10 pm

TROM Prologue

Post by Shane »

Thanks for the clean up Andy, I appreciate it man.I'm a little unsure about the lost colony side of it now really having thought about it more. everything up to that point is logical progression but that part seems a little gimicky now. I really only need to explain that there were 3 space wars without going into too much detail. I'll leave it up to Mike and Andy to fill in the blanks with their own stories.I'm glad you think the chronology is sound though. I love continuity.Shane.
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
Shane
Posts: 944
Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2001 9:10 pm

TROM Prologue

Post by Shane »

Just thought I'd give an update on TROM.This is going to be the first page:I'm still in two minds as to whether to add word balloons as I did before or split each page into sections and treat it like a story board with text sandwiched inbetween. I may go for the latter but I'll see how it goes this week. most of the pages are nearlly there for episiode 1 but they need a little tweaking here and there so I'll launch the project properly on Sunday rather than Wednesday as originally planned.Shane.
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
AndyThomas
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TROM Prologue

Post by AndyThomas »

I can think of one way around your dilemma, but it might be messy... If you were to make each frame an individual image, you could then use an "Alt=" tag in the img tag to describe the image. Assuming most people use Internet Explorer's default settings, hovering their cursor over the image would display the appropriate text. There are probably more sophisticated image map/javascript etc ways to do it as well, but... Whichever way you do it, I'm sure we're all looking forward to this new saga...
Andy Thomas - SFXB Webmaster and Forum Moderator
CondorJoe
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Joined: Wed Oct 02, 2002 9:33 am

TROM Prologue

Post by CondorJoe »

got a good solution for you shane. turn the whole thing into a flash movie with the stills you have. just add next page buttons at the bottem. speach bubles can be placed over the image with layering and you won't damage any of the stuff youv'e done so far. wack some sound effect in thier too and your laughing.
Shane
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TROM Prologue

Post by Shane »

Thats quite a good Idea Andy, that might work ok.I did consider using flash to begin with, it can overcomplicate things though and I don't know how to write a preloader which I would definitely need for this sort of thing.Thinking about it Flash might work it's good on compresion too. AAAWWWW what's a guy gonna do?Shane.
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
AndyThomas
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TROM Prologue

Post by AndyThomas »

I've read Spider-Man demo comics on-line in a Flash page turning sort of format which was very effective. They took a little while to download on a dial-up connection mind you.Dave's point about layering is valid, it'd be quite a low-stress way of adding speech bubbles and being able to move them around, but I imagine that if you haven't allowed for them fitting them in might be tricky? Also, would they need to be another graphical layer or would Flash be able to use a built in vector and text function to generate them? I haven't really used Flash, but from what I understand its major strength in terms of keeping file sizes down relates to vector-based animations because it can scale objects and move them on the fly rather than having to have every frame pre-rendered.In this scenario I would think that a layer-based paint package could do the same thing, and as long as you have a version saved as more than one layer you can still mess around without harming the underlying background and then just produce a merged image once you're happy.Either way, you'll end up with text for each frame which you can cut and paste, so you could always go lo-tech and then upgrade!
Andy Thomas - SFXB Webmaster and Forum Moderator
CondorJoe
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TROM Prologue

Post by CondorJoe »

I'd definatly use flash as then you won't have to make multiple html pages which take ages to load from what the size of your images tell me. I know a fair bit about preloaders so point your questions my way if your stuck. Alternativly I'll send you a demo.
Happosai
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Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2001 1:38 pm

TROM Prologue

Post by Happosai »

Just thought I'd stick my oar in...;)I'm not sure what sort of text you intend to supplement the images with (dialogue (e.g. word balloons), narrative (e.g. third-person description of what's going on) or a mixture of both) or how you intend to present this (static pages or something more interactive).ALT tags: I wouldn't recommend them at all as, apart from not really being what they're for, you would have little control over how the text is displayed (positioning, font, line breaks, etc.), and it might not be immediately obvious to a casual observer that the text is there.Flash: you could do some fancy things using Flash (providing you've got the software and experience), but some problems I forsee are:- technological hurdle: more people can view plain HTML than Flash. Requires specific software and skills for production.- monolithic: people will probably have to download the whole thing before they can view even the first page, which may mean a long download time. Not easy to link to a specific part (page) of the story.- filesize: since the images being used are bitmaps, then Flash probably won't reduce their size significantly over compressed images on an HTML page (Flash's forte is vector graphics, which you have to build up using geometric shapes).DHTML: you could use DHTML layers to overlay the text, but it would probably be more hassle than it's worth, might not work for everyone (browser bugs...), and might not be a suitable way of presenting the text.The simplest solutions would be:1) add the text directly to the images (easiest way is to use the layers feature of a graphics package to overlay them, then save as a flattened, web format, e.g. GIF or JPEG), and present them using a set of simple HTML pages (with previous & next page links, possibly a contents page, etc.)2) chop the full-page images into one-image-per-panel, lay the pages out out using a HTML table and add the text using HTML mark-up below the images.[Happosai]
AndyThomas
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TROM Prologue

Post by AndyThomas »

Happosai's suggestion is a good middle road. As he points out "Alt" tags have to be pointed out to people, which is what I did with my episode guide images. The reason I didn't use tables was simply time - the software I use isn't really suited to slotting images in and having descriptive text would have made the pages very large.Of course, Alt text is considered good form for HTML in general as it allows non-graphical browsers to display something in place of the image. Ditto for users who are sight impaired. That's another drawback of Flash - it's only very recently that pages generated with Flash can be "seen" by partially sighted or blind users, if at all.The on-line Flash comic I referred to before was only bringing pages in one at a time - it wasn't self-contained as a Flash file if that's what you're suggesting Dave. That might mean only one thing to download, but people on a dial up connection aren't necessarily going to want to wait for something to come down before being able to look at it.With multiple web pages you have the advantage that search engines can index the page and users can flick through a couple of pages and come back whenever they want to. Also, it leaves the author in control - if Shane wanted to change an image on a web page he could do so easily, but people would have to download a whole Flash file again just to get one updated image. I've no doubt doing it in Flash would allow you to incorporate some clever page turning effects etc, but it's worth bearing in mind the audience and the nature of the Web as a medium for publishing.
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Shane
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Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2001 9:10 pm

TROM Prologue

Post by Shane »

Totally sound points by all, and I thnkyou for your input. Everything you've mentioned above I've thought about at one time or another. I think it's a bit late for flash now, as most of my images are made up of composites and I don't have every piece at my disposal anymore. Plus I'm working in a static comic book style, so all the images have been constructed with that in mind.I think I'm with Happosai about the idea of cutting each page up and then adding text in between, which as Andy has mentioned is going to have various benefits in the overall viewing and editing of each page.Right then that's sorted then.Thanks again.Shane.
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
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