slipmat opinions needed

i am trying to design a Flash record player. so far i am working on the slipmat bit. to see my attempt so far pls go to www.fidgetbrain.com then click on the music link. there is no preloader on my music page yet so be patient. eventually you will see my slipmat which will spin if you click on the men at work thumbnail.

so why am i posting on this forum? well, i am not sure if the slipmat looks good enough. i am wondering if it might be better to replace the vector drawing with a real life jpeg. i am after some opinions as to whether the vector graphic looks good enough as it stands. and if you think a jpeg would look better could anyone supply me with a jpeg taken from directly above a slipmat? i cant find any on the net and none of me buddies have a record player...age of CD's and all that :(

many thanks!

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Martin Threlfall:confused:

dude that site its so awesome! , and imo i dont hink it should b an actual pic stick with wat u got, its good,clean and stylish

Stickwith the vector. It's already very well drawn, and since it's in vector, you can resize/distort it to your heart's content without losing quality.

It looks pretty good, but I found some things that you might want to know about...

1. Once you click on the volume thing you cant get off of it... at least on the music page :p

[edit: Nevermind it works now for some reason :p]

2. Is it suppost to do something when you put the disk on the turntable.... cause i didnt do anything for me :p

3. The scrolling thing goes for a really long time after all of the images...

Im not sure if theses thing were already pointed out to you and you didnt fix them yet or what... I just though I would let you know :P

Other then that though I think it looks alright.. As for the vector vs. jpeg... I think what you got right now looks great ;)

cheers for the words of encouragement. i work alone - i don't work with any designers or artists so sometimes i need a second opinion. specially as im only a fledgeling vector drawer.

i think ill stick with the vector drawing after receiving these replies. the needle is the next challenge!

in reply to prev questions:

1. yer i noticed that volume bug once or twice myself. will investigate. grrrr. silly flash.

2. & 3. know about these probs thanks. page still under construction so everything is a bit higglydy piggldy atm. i will get there one day.

thanks again

bubba

A small explanation on bitmaps (jpegs) vs. vectors, for future reference for you.

Any picture file such as a jpeg, gif, bmp, psd, tga, etc. is called a Bitmap. Bitmaps are composed of a lot of little really really really small squares called pixels. Each pixel can only be one color; however, since the pixels are all really small and there are so many of them, you can have each one be different color. When all the pixels are put together, you have an image. When you zoom into a bitmap file, you will see the pixels get bigger and bigger. This is how you work with individual pixels in photoshop. :D Also, another thing is that the more pixels you have, the clearer or sharper your picture will appear to be.

Vector drawings, on the other hand, are based on points and lines, spleens, etc. Basically they are "directions" that the computer will give the vector renderer (in this case, the flash player) to do. So, the computer will tell the renderer, "ok. make a red circle on the screen." And it is done. But with a bitmap, each of the pixels is already colored in.

Now, the difference between these two is that since bitmaps are made with pixels, they cannot be 'played around with' without losing quality. A bitmap can only be downsized, or shrunk, without losing quality. When it is blown up or made bigger, it will Always lose quality. When it is distorted, same thing. This is because the picture has preset pixels that the program works with.

On the other hand, vector images are based on points and lines and sole "instructions" of the computer, therefore it can be resized as big as you want it to be. If you resize it, the computer will redraw a bigger circle. You get the drift?

Another difference is that vectors are generally smaller than bitmaps in file size.

The thing is, you can't get actual photos in a vector program, which is something you can do with bitmap.

This is why you should generally keep some rules in mind:
1. When workign with bitmaps, it's always a good idea to start Large, larger than you need to. You can always resize it later.
2. It's probably a ogod idea to make any company logos you have in a vector program like AI before importing them into photoshop or flash.

hope that helped