Ignorance WAS bliss!

Posted November 25th, 2008 by Kimberly Dowd

See the Christmas lights on top of the site? I did that in Flash. You wanna know how LONG it took me to do that? Far too long.

Flash looks wonderful, but it’s always been a bear for me to learn. I’ve bought quite a few books and even took online classes. Coworker S is awesome – she can slap videos into ads, she can make games, she makes movie clips and all sorts of cool stuff.

Me? I’ve always been stuck on crap like morphing my first name into my last name and making balls bounce. So over the last few months (the layoffs in August, actually) I’ve been trying harder to incorporate Flash into my work. I’m forcing myself to make more Flash banners and play with it when I have spare time.

And you know what I found? I’m even more frustrated with it than ever! Apparently, ignorance WAS bliss. Having an inkling of what Flash can do drives me insane because I know what I want the end result to be, and I don’t know how to get there.

Take the lights, for example. I wanted them to not alternate colors. I wanted a dim colored bulb, then a colored bulb that was lit and “glowed” from the inside. There should have been some sort of outer glow of light around the bulb. There should be some sort of glare on the bulb to show that it’s round. There should be a light shadow underneath to make them look like they’re over the page. I know it needs to be done, but I don’t know how to manipulate the tools I’m given to do it.

I’m the same with coding. I can read code and understand it. I can speak code…that is, I can talk out what I need it to do, I can talk out the loops. It’s just the vocabulary – the LANGUAGE that I have problems with.

I know I’m getting older and that I’m not going to learn this all as quickly as the ones in college and tech schools. But if I’m going to be booted out into the real world (and even if I’m not) I need to be as sharp as I can.

I just hope I don’t pull my hair out in the process. It’s just growing back.

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