Omg it’s been so long since I’ve written an article like this. The last was May 2016, and the one before that was September 2015, (if you don’t count the article about things I learned in 2016).
Here’s what I’ve been working on recently(ish) throughout 2018:
Humanhood.net – Website built by Burnthebook, my role was the frontend, making it match the design, and animate/transition nicely. Motion was important for this project because the client is a dance troop. We used Greensock library, as well as good old reliable jQuery throughout, and heavily on an animated carousel on the Productions page.
FootballManager.com – Website & holding page built by Burnthebook, my role was the frontend, creating the HTML & CSS, which included some sliding carousels, and an offcanvas menu on mobile.
DrainsAndPests.co.uk – Built by Burnthebook, my role was frontend build, created from our super efficient templates, which allow us to roll out functionality easily, while allowing each website it’s own unique style. Also it has animated water on the homepage.
CampAmerica.ie – A multilingual Craft 3 website. Built by Burnthebook, my role was frontend, including a few different iterations of the really cool parallax homepage (best seen on desktop). I’ve recently added styles for a Hebrew translation, which has right-to-left text.
Codepen – I’ve added a few small things to codepen, including this:
Oh and this:
BotSumo – This is still being downloaded all over the world, and I still get reviews almost every day in all sorts of languages. There’s loads of new videos that people are uploading to Youtube too, which is just amazing. Here’s one that I was lucky enough to get from someone who reviews mobile games:
Dodgy Dozers – So I put on Twitter a while ago I was working on a new game called “Dodgy Dozers” where you control a sleeping guy sat on a bulldozer (other vehicles will be available). And I wanted it to be a silly game where the ragdoll guy can fall off and get run over, because that’s always funny right?
I haven’t been able to quite figure out the ragdoll yet though, so I’m parking this for now because the lack of progress is making me annoyed!
New tools:
Greensock – I used this to create the codepen animation above, and for a few web projects (like the custom carousel on Humanhood, mentioned above).
Figma – I discovered this when watching Youtube tutorials by CharlieMari about Sketch (which I’m hoping to start using at work any month now), but then she said she’d moved onto this new tool called Figma. I’ve had a look and it’s like a web version of Sketch but with prototyping built in, and has intuitive vector editing tools too. I’ve been using it to create some new tiles for a new version of my Chicken Fokkers game. Here”s what Figma looks like:
A really cool thing about Figma is the way you can create multiple artboards per project, of set preset sizes (mobiles, tablets, desktop sizes etc), with east grids too. Useful for building sites in Foundation I think, although haven’t used this for web projects yet.
Audacity – This isn’t new to me, but I’ve been using it now more than ever, editing the Unusable Podcast.
Adobe After Effects – I’ve been using this for the first time (I know, shocking right? Where has this been all my life?!) to edit videos of the Unusable Podcast and add a cool equaliser on screen. Like this:
Other:
Codeclub – I’ve started volunteering at a Codeclub in Derby. It’s like an after-school club for kids to do some basic programming. They sort of work through these worksheets that show how to create basic games in a visual programming language called Scratch. Actually it’s not that basic, Scratch is a brilliant tool that gives you the tools to create some really cool things. Comparing it to what I much about with when making Unity games, it’s not really much different!
Debugging the kids projects can be tricky, and it’s more of an exercise in communication than it is in programming, for them to explain what their software doesn’t do and they need help with, and then me responding using terms they understand is quite a challenge!
Unusable Podcast – I’ve been recording these podcasts with Andy about usability, and publishing them to Youtube, Spotify and I think pretty much everywhere you can get podcasts. Here’s the first episode on Youtube:
If you’re interested in the Unusable Podcast that I co-host, follow us on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/unusablepodcast