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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Flash Artist Statement

So I can't post my Flash animation on here, although I am very proud of it. Flash has always been a challenge for me and I was happy with my result. Here is my artist statement to make up for it...

The main objective for my flash assignment was to create a drum simulator that people can have fun and play along with. It features some very simple riffs that are noticeable to the target market’s minds and has an interactive drum set containing real sounds made by actual drum sets. The goal of this project was to create a simulator that will inspire someone to play a real drum set, much like Guitar Hero did for the guitar.

Clearly, the main influence of Drum Hero is the popular videogame Guitar Hero. What Guitar Hero did for the video game industry was provide an interactive experience between the gamer and the game that allows you to feel like a rock star. For many people, the game inspired them to play real guitar and even if it didn’t, they still get to feel like a rock star even if they’re playing on “easy” mode. Drum Hero is obviously a much simpler version of the game and its intention is to entertain the target market during their journeys through the world wide web.

The target market is teenagers between the ages of 11-17. Many of these kids are entertained by some of the simplest things. Hopefully, Drum Hero will entertain them as well. It’s “rock star” text allows for the participant to imagine themselves at a real rock concert, jamming along to an amazing blues riff.

The soundtrack was provided by myself, as I decided to record several different samples of genres. The ones that made the cut were the country, blues, and rock riffs. They are very simple and almost anyone can click along to the beat. The challenge of the game is to master the art of clicking the right drum at the right time. Though it may seem easy at first, it is actually quite hard and requires practice. Therefore, I decided to put a practice level in the game so people could practice playing drums and if they want, play their favourite song through their computer’s speakers and jam along to it.

One of the biggest challenges in creating Drum Hero was to use the keyboard to trigger the different drums. Through much investigation, I could not find a simple way to do this that matched with my knowledge of Flash. There was no clear way and I found this rather difficult.

However, the game is still effective with the mouse and is actually much more challenging. As well, I could no figure out a way to lower the volume of the different songs. Though it is not too much of a problem, it is still something I wish I could have improved.

All in all, I am not that great with using the Flash program. However, as time went on, I slowly became more comfortable with using it. I discovered how to use scenes and hot to jump between them using buttons. Though I may have been stressed at times, Drum Hero’s production allowed me to view Flash in a way I had never seen it. Now I am able to understand the program and when the time comes that I must use it again, I will not be afraid to put my effort in it.

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