Me Time

I am a Film, Video and Interactive Media major with a minor in IDD. I am from Massachusetts and I am the Programming Manager of Q30 and the Vice President of IDD Club. My specific interests in IDD are motion graphics, visual effects for film and creating compelling posters. I love playing and watching sports such as football, soccer and hockey. I guess that's about it. Wait, let me just get seventy-five words here ... 75.

Flash Banner: Madden NFL 10

I’m sure you’ve all seen Youtube flash banners like this before. This ad is for Madden NFL 10. Their motto in this ad is “Fight for every yard” like the football player in this ad is doing. At first, we see this ad disguised as the top of the Youtube screen without an ad displaying Madden NFL videos as the suggested videos. Then, a player in one of the videos comes out of the screen a bit and pushes his screen over, fighting for yards, pushing the other videos out of their space and making titles fly away. Then, the entire banner space turns into a full banner with their motto “Fight for every yard: in stores now” over a still image. I think this banner is very effective because it tricks your mind, grabs your attention, and is on a website where many people who would be interested in purchasing this game would look.

I could see that in flash, not only did the animators use screen captures and videos that could be in those spots on Youtube, but they also drew some shapes themselves in flash. After the football player leaves his original video screen, the side of the screen breaks and we see some jagged black line sticking out which looks like was done in flash with the pencil tool. Many layers were used for each video, each title, each smaller ad etcetera. Key frames were also utilized to animate the screens moving and the titles shifting and flying apart.

The part that boggles me a bit is how they got the football player to break out of his screen and overlap some of the other videos. I’m not sure how they would do that in flash. He must be his own layer separate from his video background and he must have a transparent background for his layer. I can imagine doing this in After Effects and having all videos in this banner being in one project file so the football player can overlap the other videos and making their screens crunch and shift appropriately.