Image
  • Home
  • Books
    • About My Writing
    • The Darkening Dream
      • About the Book
      • Buy the Book Online
      • Sample Chapters
      • Short Story: Harvard Divinity
      • Cast of Characters
      • About the Magic
      • Goodreads Giveaway
    • Untimed
      • About the Book
      • Buy Untimed Online
      • Book Trailer
      • Sample Chapters
      • Cast of Characters
      • Origin of the Idea & Characters
      • What the critics say
      • Press Coverage
      • Goodreads Giveaway
    • Naughty Dark Contest
    • Favorite Fantasy Novels
  • News
  • Reviews
    • The Darkening Dream
      • What the critics say
      • Info for Reviewers
      • Press Coverage
      • Awards
    • Untimed
      • What the critics say
      • Info for Reviewers
      • Press Coverage
      • Awards
  • Bio
  • Gallery
  • Blog
    • All Posts
    • On Writing
    • Reviews
    • Video Games
    • Food
    • Technology
    • Anything Else
  • About
    • About me
    • About my Writing
    • About my Video Games
    • Ask Me Anything
  • Contact

Buy it Now!

Or Enter to Win a Free Autographed Copy

Sample Learn More

Buy it Now!

Watch the Trailer

Or Enter to Win a Free Autographed Copy
Sample Learn More

Round 4: 96 of 100 tickets!

Subscribe by email:

Find Andy at:

Follow Me on Pinterest

The Darkening Dream

  • About the book
  • Where to buy
  • Sample Chapters
  • Short Story: Harvard Divinity
  • Characters
  • About the Magic
  • Reviews
  • Reviewer Information
  • Press Coverage
  • Awards
  • Naughty Dark Contest
  • Goodreads Giveaway

Recent News

  • Dream a Little Dream
  • Hark, I hear The Darkening Dream
  • Summer Night's Dream Sale
  • Dream Sale
  • Thanksgiving Dream - only $0.99
  • Harvard Divinity
  • BlogTalkRadio Interview
  • More Awards
  • Video Games, Novels, and Ideas
  • Big Giveaway Winners!
  • Big Giveaway!
  • Round 2 Closed!
  • Award Time!
  • The Darkening Dream in Publishers Weekly
  • The Darkening Dream - Free Today!
  • More Special Prize Winners!
  • Kindle Select - The Sales
  • Brace yourself for Hardcover
  • Kindle Select - The Results
  • The Darkening Dream - Free on Kindle

The Flash Ad

Feb04

In keeping with my goal of keeping you all informed about every little detail of the creation process — which you readers probably don’t care about but my writer followers might — I had to create a Flash ad for The Darkening Dream this week. On Tuesday it became apparent that I could really use one posthaste to get a campaign going on Goodreads.

But my attempts to find a contractor who was willing to turn something out in a day or two fell flat and I just bit the bullet and handled it myself. I’ve been doing this a lot on this project. I program and design the website. I did a lot of layout work for my covers and interiors. Anyway, during my Flektor years (2006-7) I did a whole bunch of Flash programming but I never really used the animation tools.  So I cracked open the documentation webpages and skimmed the minimum I needed.

The result (a day and a half later):

[swfobj src=”/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/GoodReads.swf” width=”300″ height=”250″]

I don’t think it’s half bad considering I’m not an artist. But I am a programmer, this SWF has a 9k load footprint! It’s perhaps a hair “flashy” and I couldn’t figure out how to fade the text (if anyone knows, tell me in the comments). The alpha channel disappears on text objects. Probably I have to convert them to movieclips or something like that. Flash has all these weird internal concepts like movieclips and symbols that never made a lot of sense either from interface or the API standpoint.

So tell me what you think. And don’t miss out on my Goodreads paperback giveaway either:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Darkening Dream by Andy Gavin

The Darkening Dream

by Andy Gavin

Giveaway ends March 01, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Adobe Flash, Animation, Development Frameworks, Flash, Flash Pro, goodreads, Multimedia
All Things Andy Gavin
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Programmed by Andy Gavin