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?
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Rock On!
I love that you even took the time to write the story.
You are the man.
Thanks for the kind words. I too spent many a day and night fluttering away through flash kit. I’m just pleased you kept the good work going.
Sluggy was pretty cool for his time – still looks good at 9 years old, tho the code (and coder) is showing its age.
Thankyou so much for sharing this – It’s making me look like a flash genius at work – I just hope my boss doesn’t expect to much else as I’m a total beginner with actionscripts & coding – I have previously spent my time working in Flash 4 painstakingly creating animation frame by frame.
Hell-o 😀 Well, some years ago when I was still going to school I saw flash installed in my slow computer. I saw people sending flash cards to their friends and I thought I should be able to make some of mine too. I never got too far I have just made some few good animations I used to do graduation projects for school. I live in Colombia and I dont have much money and I dont have access to books that can help me. Now here I am, I found this page and I’m reading these cool stories, I want to thank you for creating this space, I’ve been searching for a site like this for days, thanks a lot, I wonder if you could contact me, just to chat, I enjoy talking to smart people 😀
Thanks a lot! You’re very nice! And this page flip thing is really great!
I found by changing 2/3 to 1/100 you can just click to flip the pages, it’s perfect! You know some people may be too lazy to drag them across =P
I think your page flipper is my sluggy. But thanks for putting your stuff up either way. Maybe some day my neurochemicals can coalesce into a full flash programmer and I can make something useful for the web and give it away for free!
yep, the “Sluggy” story happens to me as well, about two years ago. This is my “sluggy” lol
http://www.jacquielawson.com/preview.asp?cont=1&hdn=0&pv=3111930
well, at that time I had no ideea about flash, so I started from zero to hero (not exactly).
Thank you very much, indeed, for the flipping page, it works fantastic:)
I still don’t have a print button:d, hopefully I will manage. Any ideea?
Meus parabéns. A sua generosidade motiva muitos apaixonados pelo flash!
Thank for your generosity. It save that moment where i thought this would be the end. As you’ve been inspired one day, i think we’ve all been reading this “Sluggy” story and even before while finding this treasure of yours.
I hope one day i will be able to give back this inspiration.
Thanks Dude!
You Rock!!!
Hi,
I am really amazed with your story , It was a great moment which changed your life.
I wish that can work with me as well. I am new to flash but really not found the person like me. I am inspired by http://www.kirupa.com but not found any body helping to new comers.
Thanks for the great help you are doing for the people.
It’s just great…………………………!
Well, I hope I could write it in few words…
Really, it have surpassed my initial interest about pageflip. It’s your “Sluggy” experience in it’s self my own “particular little file” whith wich I’ve stumbled…
Actually it tells it all bout life… it’s about witness, faith in one’s beliefs, ingenuity, curiosity with life little things, generosity, respect and gratefulness.
Things like this helps us to believe that there’s still some hope with human being…
It’s nice to know that not everything in life has a price tag associated with it. One good deed deserves another, and I too donated my time for free to help incorporate the page turn effect into a struggling musician’s website.
Thanks for your generosity and expertise!
I feel same. It’s begin from I know pageflip turning. WOW, I can’t believe it, but it’s real, type in flash text editor becoming into realistic material, and the one of my Inspiration people is Sean O’Shell(YOU).
Mis respetos y cuando parecia que nadie mas iba a existir siendo como tu… ahi estas, ayudando sin nada a cambio. You are the man.