Re: FLASH: OT...tactful wording

[Laura Mollett]

Hi Carl,


> How do you tactfully tell your boss and a coworker that the animation they

> have created and wish to use on a web site is...uh...horrid.


You can't :) I'd say your best bet is to try and find ways to improve what's

there to something that can be used. Start by finding 3 things you like

about it, and providing those as praise (should start any critique that way

anyways, with 3 good things).


Personally, the font on the word loading is nice. I like the cat. and I like

the cat sound. ha, that's 3 ;) Then mention a few things you don't

understand... what are those little red circles for? do the images have any

theme, what's all that pipey stuff in the background got to do with it?

(well, I mean choose your own, cuz you might know those, and phrase them

nicer). Then you could suggest improvements "well you know, we can take that

great cat and make it a vector and that'll decrease the need for load time,

and help with pixelation. Maybe we need to explain how this all ties

together and what the point of it is to the viewer... If we made the 'pipes'

lots smaller or removed them, we could increase the room for the cat and

images and that'd make it more dramatic and emphasize the important

elements" (assuming those are the important elements). If we make the

stripes vectors and use a straight blue fill, we could get a much better

color combination, and again decrease load time - these colors attract

attention for this reason (provide refs :), these combinations look

particularly well together etc. This arrangement provides more drama and

draws your eye, etc. (try and use what you know in a way that sounds very

professional.)

>

> Even the preloader is nothing to be proud of.  It is probably even

> unnecessary,


Well this took almost a minute (57 seconds) to dl on my 33.6 modem, so at

the moment I do think it needs a preloader. You can show them how to make it

faster so it doesn't need one and then you won't even need to tell them that

part is awful :) Use the text in combination with the cat and blue - you

could make something really dramatic out of that. Have the cat burst

through. If you turn it into a vector (which shouldn't be hard at all), you

can animate it, and have him claw through a white page or something - that'd

be fun. (um, just to doublecheck, where did the image come from? I'm only

asking because I'm in Kentucky and it looks a lot like a wildcat-type logo,

only in red - they do need to have the right to use it, of course :)


hth,

Laura


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