Something About Sluggy
A long long time ago on a Flash forum far far away… I was trying to grasp the full implications of the “text editor thingy” inside Flash. Supposedly, you could type magic words into it and Flash would obey your every command. Finally! My computer would do my bidding rather than it forcing me to press CTRL ALT DEL and string consecutive expletives together in new and exciting ways. Since FlashKit was the biggest resource dedicated to learning all things Flash it’s no surprise I could be found there frittering away my time browsing the many user-submitted files.
And then one day it happened, it took me by surprise. The ‘magic moment’ when I stumbled onto a peculiar little file. It was completely useless. It didn’t convey a message, it didn’t sell anything, it didn’t enhance my site navigation, it didn’t do much of anything. It was just “sluggy”. And I was fascinated by it!
In the land of tweened flat vectors Sluggy stood out with its sense of depth and shimmering fluid motion. Sure, there were plenty of cool SWF files around at the time but Sluggy was the first FLA file to lure me into the mind of a programmer. I spent the night running through various elements of Darrin Hurd’s FLA file. Bouncing from one clip to another, trying to grasp how all the little bits coalesced to form something greater. I don’t know if he felt a tremor in “The Force” or not, but to me, for that night, Darrin Hurd was godlike. Not only had he taken little chunks of words and graphics and turned them into something so wondrous, he was lifting the curtain to let anyone and everyone see how the magic was done. Such benevolence! 
I think I sent him an e-mail thanking him for his generosity, as I recall, it went something like, “Cool! Thanks! Cool! WOW! Awesome! Thanks!” and so on. I never heard anything back from him, I didn’t expect to, he’d already done so much.
And so on I went, my new hunger leading me somewhere I’d not been before. Thanks for the inspiration Darrin Hurd, it’s been fun.
What inspires you? Have you had a similar experience?
Comments(22)
RSS Feeds
I have been searching for more than 6 hours now but could not find any interesting help for my...
Loading ...
When I found PageFlip, I had that same “magical moment” that you just described above. I’ve learned a lot about Flash in college, simple buttons and tweening stuff which I got pretty good at (compaired to my classmates). PageFlip blew me away.
I wouldn’t be able to continue learning if it wasn’t for you and those who share your philosophy.
I absolutly love your attitude. And Sluggy fascinates me too…but for a slightly different reason. I had a pet turtle named Turkle, whose tank sat on my desk. He would follow the end of my mechanical pencil just like Sluggy does. He provided a welcome break from hours of studying for Thermodynamics and Fluid Flow….
Turkle is gone, but now I have Sluggy! Thank you for your hard work, generosity and paying forward story.
Thank you for your tutorials. It’s awesome.
Hi, I’ve been going around the internet for the last 24 hours, I’m in need for this flipping pages, I could’ve made my own, but unfortunatly I have no time, I didn’t open ur file yet, but i’m going 2 just after submiting this …
thx a lot .. there’s no way avilable to pay for a professional one, but as your file is free .. I’m sure that i’ll come up with something nice ..
thx .. you did a great work ..
Hey, thanks for this flippage. Your tutorials are very easy to follow.
Thank you so much! You’re tutorials are fantastic – so easy to follow. I’m very grateful for your generosity.
Thank you so much
you are simply awesome