Ninja Shizatch

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Cyberjunk - Episode 1

Rhykker

on Oct. 5, 2008

Cyberjunk - Episode 1

I couldn't be happier with how this page turned out. Sure, if I had two weeks instead of two days to make it, and I wasn't limited by filesize (had to keep it under a meg), it could have turned out better, but I think this is some of my best work. I think I've even managed to optimize it so that the animations don't get choppy or slow down your computer (fingers crossed).

The spinning galaxy effect was surprisingly easy to make. I took a stock image of a galaxy, stretched it in Photoshop to a circular shape (since pretty much all images of real galaxies are at an angle, and thus, ellipses), imported it into flash, set it spinning, then squeezed it back into an ellipse.

The solar flare effect was based on an online tutorial (by Daniel, I believe - the credits were incomplete) that I MacGyvered to follow and shift with the sun.

I'm really happy with the space-view of the planet - I love the city lights. Initially, the continents and water were greener and bluer (respectively), but I found that made the planet look too cheery. For the darker, more polluted and dead look I was going for, I just desaturated the colors, bringing out the grays.

The city skyline view is actually what took me the longest to accomplish. Painting it took a couple hours. I'm not entirely happy with the results, but I'm satisfied, given that backgrounds aren't my forte. Again, given more time, I could have made it better. But it was a learning experience. And I'm happy with the flickering lights - learned some actionscript to make the flickering random.