Rudi on Rails

Look what I found: my bachelor’s final project. This was the second Flash application I ever made, created in 2004/early 2005. At that time I was just starting with Flash MX and my skills were on a rather basic level. My personal goal was to get familiar with the whole software package, learning the Flash way as well as using ActionScript with the timeline.

The title was “Plottmarie” or rather dull: Practical use of the Drawing API in Flash MX 2004. Plottmarie was a real existing firm in Berlin that, unfortunately, does not exist anymore. Their main business was designing logos and layouts of every kind, advertising print, foil plot and textile print. The initial objective was to develop a t-shirt designer application for the web where customers can create their own designs to submit it to the company. They would, then, print it onto the shirt and send it out to the clients.

Getting Started

I must confess that I was initially struggling wrapping my head around the whole Flash thing. Mastering ActionScript was the least problem, but dealing with the problem of running code depending on where you are on the timeline, shesh! Especially running movies embedded into others and executing commands within those to change the parents’ state… you get the point.

Anyway, once I got the grasp of it the development was proceeding surprisingly quickly. The drawing API was used almost entirely throughout the program and to generate the interface. It covers all the basic painting functionalities, although the graphic design could have used some more love. Have fun designing your own shirts:

Where Can I Order Now?

You might ask yourself now: where is the save button and how can I order my shirt? Well, unfortunately I did not get this far. Towards the submission date of this project I simply ran out of time to make it as fancy as I wanted it to be. Nonetheless, I accomplished what I initially anticipated to learn: getting into the stuff that has always astonished and that makes those web sites move.

If you like this little shirt designer, I’d be happy to receive your designs! Make a screenshot and send it to shirts[at]rudionrails[dot]com. I will put the image onto the site if you are a skilled designer ;-)