I'm the Teaching Assistant for Tom Klein this year in the "Interactive Animation" class at the UCLA Animation Workshop, and it turns out that I'm learning (or re-learning) a lot by teaching other people how to use Flash.

Last week I decided to reapply what I've recently relearned to four different Flash projects that I have made in previous years.

First I optimized my Self-Portrait, and cut the filesize in half so I could submit it to NewGrounds.com.

Self-Portrait was like the 7th or 8th most popular submission on November 11th, but NewGrounds only keeps track of the Daily Top 5. Still, I was pretty happy that my film made the Top 10 after being seen by over 3,000 people and getting a rating of 3.6 out of 5.
(UPDATE - 11-17-2005: Self-Portrait made the FRONT PAGE at NewGrounds.com)

I then decided to rework my Stick Fighter game, which was my Final project that I made last year in the Flash class when Brian Boyl was teaching it. I added volume controls for the audio and submitted the game to NewGrounds.com last Tuesday. My game didn't do as well as film, but it still scored over 3 out of 5.

Feeling another boost of confidence, I went looking for any other Flash projects that I could revive. I found another one of the assignments that I made last year in Brian Boyl's class, and after several nights of experimenting with ways to optimize video in Flash, I ended up with the tiny interactive face that now resides at the bottom of the menu on the left side of this page. It randomizes between an initial state of picking/scratching my nose, chin, eye or ear and it will swtich between them when you click on each respective spot on my face.

I figured no one other than visitors to this site would want to click my face and watch me stick a finger in my orifices, so I decided not to submit it to NewGrounds.

Lastly, I tweaked my very first Flash assignment, which was actually something that I'd originally created in Photoshop and ImageReady for Tom Sito's character animation class in 2003. I made two new versions, one for each Color Scheme (Day & Night) and replaced the old static face pic in the top left corner with this looping murder/suicide self-portrait.

There are several other Flash projects that I've made over the years, but none of them are really worth revamping since they are basically just learning exercises. Still, a couple of them stand alone pretty well on their own and kinda fun.

This one was an exercise in Keyframe Animation and Tweening:
http://www.joshuajmorgan.com/swf/blue.html

And this one is my first game:
http://www.joshuajmorgan.com/swf/rooms.html