My name is James. I’m an animator. At least I used to be. I’ve given up a short career in animation to go back to a state school and study to become a computer scientist. Fortunately, this has placed me in a rather rare situation. I’m an artist who now knows how to program in object-oriented languages, as well as utilize the data structures and algorithms that come with it. When it comes to game development for the Adobe Flash platform, I’m right at home. So naturally, I’ve decided that making games while going to school is a fine way to make some extra cash, as well as flex my understanding of all the new things I learn at college. How fun is that?

Production blogs are awesome! Unfortunately, there aren’t that many of them out there. So consider this my attempt to help fill the creative void for people who would like to find a resource for Flash game development with ActionScript 3.0. I’m am NOT the authority on this subject matter. There are plenty of incredibly smart people out there who could code ellipses around me. Some of them are downright heroic in their ability to retain and utilize this knowledge.

Now, this is not to say that this will only be a blog for programmers. It would be stupid to start down a new avenue in life and completely forgo all the hard work I did to become an animator. I intend to show a fair amount of reference regarding animation, character design, level design, and more. I’ll document every step from a character’s birth as a doodle on a napkin, to their implementation as a sprite in the final flash game. I’ll show you how I develop an idea for a game level, sketch it out, break it into pieces and implement it in the end. As far as I know, there aren’t that many resources out there that go this in-depth.

In lieu of all of the features I plan to implement in this production blog, let me make clear what I will NOT do. I will NOT just slap up my source code. The last thing that I want is some n00b punk to steal my code, make a game, call it his own hard work, and then make a thousand dollars without sticking my name in the credits. There’s a lot of that going around, and I’d be an idiot to say that I’ve never been tempted to do the same. I WILL on the other hand show you conceptual examples of how I create and implement my code structures. This does two things. It gives you a resource and it makes you think about how you can integrate it into your own projects. Now, granted, it would be silly for me to exclude all code excerpts, just don’t expect to be able to come to this site, download my class files, and call it a day. I’d also like to think of this as somewhat of a participatory venture. Therefore I encourage anyone who has a question, comment, or opinion to leave a comment on the post. This does not mean that I will answer questions like “My code doesn’t work, fix it.” But I would be fascinated to read any differing opinions you all might have on the content I provide on this site. So let’s get started! I’d like to thank all the generous people at Wordpress.org for giving me such a robust blogging platform to use for free. It’s people like you who steer the history of the Internet and the ideals of free speech. I salute you, and I encourage anyone who reads this to go to their site and offer your support.