Experiencing five Flash conferences in the last two months has left me with lots of inspiration from the sessions of some exceptional Flashers, whom I'm honored to call my friends. But it also left me wanting more and so I'm asking you guys:
The Who are the most influential Flashers today? article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Who do are your influences? Who inspires you? Who has their finger on the pulse of where the Flash Platform is today? Who do you listen to?
Leave a comment and share your inspirations.
The Who are the most influential Flashers today? article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Tough question!
From a personal point of view, a few guys have been a great help to me along the way. Scott Ingalls, FITC Winnepeg presenter, introduced me to a different way of coding (OOP). Francis Bourre’s stuff took me to a whole other level. Collin Moock has arguably helped more people with his incredible writing than any other. And Grant Skinner’s work and writing are just so very well considered, and his presentations are spot-on. Of course, it’s impossible to list them all…it is a varied and wonderful community.
Personally I’m was inspired by GNU Project. It’s for all time.
Last two weeks I inspired by PureMVC. It’s rocks!
I’d go with timbot on some of the obvious ones, Colin Moock, Grant Skinner, etc, they have shared so much knowledge and creative thinking over the years.
I also have heaps of respect for any people who just spend loads of time trying to find better ways of doing things, or on a creative level, like many of the speakers at FOTB this week. The people who just fuck about with flash/processing etc to make things look amazing.
Anyway, good to meet you the other night Aral, glad you got to point out Alias from the crowd for uploading videos during your session!!!
My first moment of, “I can’t believe someone is doing this” was Grant Skinner in his presentation at FlashForward Seattle in 2006. I was blown away. And he didn’t even show a line of code.
I’m continually wowed by all the tremendous work of the Papervision3D crew.
Keith Peters wrote my very favorite Flash book ever “Making Things Move” – that you wrote the forward for.
No one plays with other peoples toys like Doug McCune.
And lastly, in my book, Ely Greenfield is the Jedi Knight of Actionscript.
Oh, and this Aral guy isn’t exactly a slacker either. :-)
Here are some of the developers that have helped and inspired me greatly. No particular order.
Flash:
Eric Natzki
Ryan Taylor
Keith Peters
Lee Brimelow
Daniel Dura
Carlos Ulloa
Ralph Hauwert
Josh Tynjala
Felix Turner
Joey Lott
Mathieu Badimon
Zeh Fernando
Flex:
Chafic Kazoun
Christophe Coenraets
Kevin Hoyt
Tink (Stephen Downs)
Ted Patrick
Ely Greenfield
Steven Webster
Alistair McLeod
David Gassner
Yakov Fain
Doug Mccune
Eric Feminella
Peter deHaan
David Tucker
Oh, I can’t resist: “You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.” :-)
You, Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow top my list for flash.
Lately, i have been reading a lot of things by Douglas Crockford on JavaScript, and in turn i think it has made me better at ActionScript
Carlos Zumbado, Calos Ulloa, Dani Granatta, etc. you guys will be surprised with the quality of latin flash/flex developers. I guess we don’t get much attention even by adobe. it’s a cruel world :)
Aral Balkan (always honoured to have you as a brother. Thanks for opening the doors), John Grden, Carlos Ulloa, Eric Naske, Manny Tan, Josh Davis, Asa Whillock, Pritham Shetty, Mike Chambers, Richard Leggett (what a brain box), Peter Hall, Brian Lesser (always), the Red5 crew(Stephen Gong, *Chris Allen), Bill Sanders, Colin Moock (I owe a lot to this guy). There are of course lots more but, I always remember these guys
John Grden for all 5. He’s a one man coding army.
my List is made of programmers:
Colin Moock, Grant Skinner, Mike Chambers, Bill Sanders, Carols Ulloa, Aral Balkan, Lee Brimlow and co.
experimental flashers:
Joshua Davis, Brendan Dawes, Robert Hodgin,Erik Natzke, etc….but with one man in front of them all, that I haven’t seen listed above : James Patterson…the man!
We musn’t forget Chris Georgenes a great inspiration for character design and animation.
aYo Binite got me into design patterns and is creative beyond measure in graphics in Flash and Flex, and Aral Balkan and Peter Hall are equal leaders in design patterns along with Colin Moock. Chandima Cumaranatunge is another guy who does wonders with Flash and gaming as well as design patterns. In ActionScript and Flash Media server Brian Lesser and Fabio Sonnati have had giant influences.
Andre Michelle (in my eyes, the greatest Flash anything, ever), Nicolas Cannasse, Grant Skinner, Claus Wahlers.
John Grden for being deeply involved in some of the most important Flash projects around: Xray, Red5 & Papervision.
Mario Klingemann for making such incredibly advanced stuff as if it’s nothing, pushing the technology to boundaries others didn’t even know existed. (Blind Sketchmaker, Aviary Tools)
The same in this sense but for audio would be Andre Michelle and his Klangfabrik he demonstrated at FOTB.
Posted too quick! I’m gratefuk to Nicholas Canasse on a daily basis for Mtasc, even though he would prefer people to use Haxe ;-)
Nicolas Cannasse, for me, seeing as I’m basing much of my career on his work, and took time out to write a book about it. Then, theres Andre Michelle, Colin Moock, Keith Peters. Oh, and I guess I’d better say Grant Davies or he’ll have my head. If he posts here and doesn’t mention me, I’ll certainly have his ;-) Also, John Gardn’s always been great with the tools, and is a good guy to chat to, bless him. And, yes, that guy Aral Balkan knows a thing or two, but do I write that, seeing as this is his blog? Ho hum….
Hey Michiel van der Ros… Use haXe, sincerely, because in doing so, you’ll find a new love in Neko. haXe is a great language, but Neko is the most incredible software I’ve ever laid my hands on. It’s really let the inventor in me go wild…
I vote for my alltime flashFavorites (the A-team):
- Mike Chambers
- Lee BrimeLow
- Andre Michelle
- Aral Balkan
- Colin Moock
- Carlos Ulloa
- Ralph Hauwert
Well i think thats about it!
Altough i know alot of very good actionscripters that dont want to be in the spotlight and can easily beat the most on this list….. :)
Bye :)
Mmmmm,
I am not sure, but all these people are developers, aren´t they?
I look for inspiration from Design flash sites.
Such as: 2advanced, 6d, aaronjasinski, activate, anatol, areadesign, boxer, braingiants, carldekeyzer, cerotec, cloats, crashshop, designiskinky, detremmerie, dhp-architecten, digitlondon, dworkz, eccentris, eendar, elelec, fabiaanvanseveren, firstbornmultimedia, freakyfacets, gecko9, green colorize, group94, h2omagazine.com, haramuseum, hiddenbrookstudio, hybridworks, janknoff, josephkosinski, joshuadavis, lamanoazul, leoburnett, lifebeach, linkdup, lumenstudio, manipulator, marcogrob, mariolalich, microbians, mjau-mjau, moma, notbent, notbent, organicfields, philrenaud, pixelriot, rsqaudi, sb-showcase, shootstudio, site06, suburbia-media, thefwa, thibaud, transporter, universaldesignstudio, vasava, verne and yugop
Yeah, you’ve a point there. I used to work with an Australian guy, Jeremy Hoare, back in the days of Flash 3 / 4, and he could animate the hell out of anything, make it look like it belonged in a film exhibition, and produce it overnight. I wonder what happened to him?
I’d list the following:
1) Doug McCune is always insightful and cutting edge. He’s that guy riding a big wave that just makes you go “Cooool!”
2) Ely Greenfield though often quiet seems to put out some some big ripples periodically.
3) David Coletta – can I say that he’s got a bit of a fatherly feel to him? Maybe it’s the fact he’s a bit older. His blogs have an essence of maturity. And he deals with a lot of the nuts’n'bolts’ but with an almost shepherdly feel.
4) Mike Chambers – the news from Adobe source. Just seems that I hear it first from this guy.
I’m not sure about a 5th. And I am sure there are others I have yet to discover.
Personally here is my list and their areas:
Most of all Francis Bourre (OOP)
Mike Chambers (From Flash Generator to now)
Nicolas Cannasse (MTASC/HaXe)
Grant Skinner (Blog’s of wonders)
Thibault Imbert (PDF/Gif/ByteArray)
My top 3 for sure would be:
Darron Schall (http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/)
Grant Skinner (http://www.gskinner.com/blog/)
Aral Balkan (http://aralbalkan.com/)
When I think about, there developers that I do have more respect for, but I have learnt the most from the above people. This would make a cool poll, although there is a lot of people that would need to be chucked in there :P
I really have to stand up for my Belgian friends, amongst whom some amazing coders:
-Nicolas Lierman @ http://www.aboutnico.be/
-Christophe Herreman @ http://www.herrodius.com/blog/
These 2 guys eat Flex for breakfast, check out their amazing stuff.
I guess I’m a bit old school – Branden Hall and Sam Wan all the way, the godfathers of OOP with ActionScript
Sticking with Max about almost all of his choices. Maybe adding Mario Klingemann. If its about flash. I think the biggest influence in my life has been given by the guys from springframework.org (Java… but hey!) especially Juergen Hoeller.
Branden Hall & Joshua Davis.
They aren’t as vocal as a lot of the influeners, but when they do speak you can’t but help and listen. That and they have a habit of backing their ideas with code / creation.
Grants also premo good.
Some of my favorites, and lucky enough to consider some as friends:
Robert Reinhardt http://www.themakers.com/
Joey Lott http://www.person13.com/wordpress/
Sam Rivello http://www.blog.rivello.org/
Eric Natzke
Nicholas Cannasee
Sam Wan
Keith Peters
**shameless plug** Myself at times. http://www.troyworks.com/blog/