I wrote this little script to dynamically generate and animate confetti this afternoon. It’s not the best I could have done, but I didn’t want to spend more than 3 hours working this out. You can check out the source here. Refresh the page if you missed it.

I’ve finally gotten around to making something out of the Flash Audio Synth code I’ve been working on. This is just a simple sound toy, inspired by Andre Michelle’s Tone Matrix. I’ll be working on some original ideas for sound toys now that I have a decent code base to work from. Make sure to hit the start button when you’re ready to hear your creation. Enjoy!

My next step is to clean all of this up and make a propper package out of it, so check back for cleaner code in a couple days. After that I need to make optimizations to how the synthesis works so I can put it to use. This is very processor hungry right now because I’m doing a lot of calculations at sample rate (44.1kH). After that I plan on adding log and exponential functionality along with some other curves. I’ll get around to trying out Pixel Bender for optimizing this stuff once it gets too processor intensive to handle.

Short Attack

Long Attack

Long Release

Long Sustain

To play with the envelope, change the values in the initValues method in SoundDemo.as. There are two envelopes, one for sound and the other for the animation, because using the exact same levels don’t always produce an optimum animation. The maximum number of samples long the envelope can be right now is 88200 because of the lazy way I looped it. The project is completely purged of resources from others, so feel safe to use it in any projects you want.

Download source

Demo: Warning, Sound On Load!

Code

Update: Cleaned up the source code. Check out SoundDemo.as to see how it works.

Demo

Code

This is one of the most exciting launches in my PBS KIDS tenure. After only a few months to design, test, user test, get assets and all of the million other things you need for a video player, it’s up and it’s awesome! The first month saw over 60 million streams and I’m sure it’s only going to go up.

The most unique aspect of the player is that it is hosted. This is quite a bit different than other video players out there for kids and really sets it apart. It was a big challenge to present such a large amount of content to preschoolers and parents on one page. Keeping things simple while surfacing all of the videos and information was a delicate balance that our designer did a killer job of.

• Launched December 2009
• Roles: Usability, Content, Fun

Speak Out is an online letter to the President from the users of PBS KIDS. The letter consists of submissions from kids that are voted on by users. The project was done in collaboration with the National Black Programmers Consortium’s New Media Institute. Check out the article about making Speak Out on the PBS Engage Blog.

• Role: Assistant Producer
• Launched: October 2008

Hooper is the lovable guinea pig in the preschool interstitials on PBS KIDS and this is his site. The site features online activities with Dash and Dot that are featured on air during the preschool shows and videos from the interstitials featuring Hooper and Steve Songs. The site also features some cool mini games that are the reward for playing Dash’s Secret Treasure on air.

Hooper was animated in small pieces of video by Bully! that trigger based on user action in a Flash masterpiece by our own Mal Jones.

• Roles: Content and Project Management
• Launched September 2007, Updated September 2008, 2009

This on air and online project was one of the coolest things I’ve worked on since coming to PBS. On air, kids are encouraged to dance along to songs sung by Dash that teach Spanish, rhythm, pitch and other subjects, and are directed to go online to keep dancing. Online, kids can make dances with one of four PBS KIDS preschool characters and play mini games to unlock new moves.

My online partner in crime Nina and I worked together to come up with the concept for this cross platform content and worked with Funny Garbage and the PBS Creative Services team to build it.

Details:

15 x 1 Minute Spots

Online Dance Game with mini game suite

September 2009