Menorah for Hanukkah

I decided to try to make a Flash-animated Menorah for my Jewish friends, so I started by Googling Menorah Images. I found one I liked, then started to make a vector image in XtremePro. Got everything done, used bevels, shading, fades, etc. Then remembered I can't do that in Flash, so I made a bitmap copy.

Next, I made the candle flames with Alien Skin's Plug-in, but couldn't use Live Effects in Flash. So I made eight slightly different flames, made bitmap copies of them, named them, and alightly altered them between frames. (elongated, shortened, widened, thinned, rotated, etc., to create the illusion of movement.

So far so good. Then I went to Google to find the order in which the candles were to be lit.

This is when I had a panic attack!:eek:

The first site I found said a Menorah had nine candles. Mine had only seven!

Then I found other sites saying that some have seven, some have nine and there is a difference in symbolism.

I am SO confused. Anyway, I'm posting my seven-candle Menorah in Flash, along with the .xar file, if anyone is interested.

And I'd really love to know the difference between the two.
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Will

And I don't know what the heck happened there...I did enter the actual dimensions of the XAR file in the text section, and I promise the Menorah was not miniature in my flash preview!

If anyone can tell me where I screwed up, I'd appreciate it!
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Will

A standard menorah has either six or seven branches. Those in the original Jerusalem temple had seven. when it was destroyed, they changed to six so that they would not seem to be defiling the original (no, i don't get that either, but...). Most today again have seven.

a channukah menorah has nine, to celebrate the 8 days of the 'miracle of the lamp' and one to hold the 'lighter' which symolizes the 'one days oil' that lit 'eight days lamps'.

cant comment on Flash. Perhaps Sally will sally by.

geo.

Bill (Soquili) suggested that I try ClipView on all frames of the animation and re-post. Here we go!
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Will

GeoBen...

Thanks for the information. I still don't know what went wrong with the animation. My page size shows in Xtreme Pro as HUGE. And it won't let me reduce the size.

Back to the drawing board! :o
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Will

Will,

I think it's got something to do with Live Effects. I've pulled your xar apart and there's no rougue elements that I can find. Even in Xtreme if you make all layers visible & eitable and select all, zoom to selection you don't just zoom in to the shapes.

Hey thanks for the consideration Will :)

Will,

I coulnn't find the error in that xar file and I didn't have the plug-in. What I've managed to do is rebuild another xar file and export your animation from new. Whatever was creating the odd page size has gone. I do get AVE errors with this xar file but it exports okay.

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Will,

I coulnn't find the error in that xar file and I didn't have the plug-in. What I've managed to do is rebuild another xar file and export your animation from new. Whatever was creating the odd page size has gone. I do get AVE errors with this xar file but it exports okay.

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Egg...You're my hero.

I have spent hours trying to figure out what went wrong with my posting. I was really proud of my animation (I'm strictly a beginner, but very enthusiastic about learning!

When I've done other animagions (all four of them, so far, when I converted it to Flash, it was the actual size of my design, fut for some reason, this one went crazy!:(

Thanks again for fixing my problem!
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Will

Will,

I don't think I fixed the problem. I think you used tweens in yours but mine doesn't tween, just runs rapidly through a sequence of still bitmaps as per an animated gif.

I thought the Menorah was a good idea and wanted to see if I could rebuild it so your work could be embedded on the forum.

Egg...

I think I figured out why it doesn't tween. I had converted the Live Effects flames to bitmap. Then I tried to change the shape of the bitmaps, completely forgetting that changing the shape of a bitmap makes it a different shape.

Flash doesn't tween bitmaps. (At least I don't think it does!)

So I am now in the process of playing with ways to simulate flame using only vectors, so that the tweening will work. I'm actually making some progress, but nothing good enough to post yet.
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Will

Heres a quick vector flame, no good for a candle, more like a roaring camp fire.

Yep, Egg...This one makes me want to bring out the marshmallows and hot dogs. Looks downright toasty.
---Will

All this just for me?! :p

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Originally Posted by Availor

All this just for me?! :p

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Maybe not JUST for you, but you most definitely were the inspiration. Though I will also be sending it via e-mail to all my Jewish friends here in the US as well.

I had fun making it, and I hope you like it!
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Will

The menorah animation is a very nice idea, but I think you need to revisit the flames. Candle flames are much simpler. These guys look more like torches. :D Makes me want to look for a fire extinguisher.

Try an elongated yellow teardrop shape with a center composed of a much smaller white teardrop and even smaller blue and orange teardrops. I think that's the right direction, but I can't try to poke around right now. There's probably a candle flame in one of Gary's XaraXone tutorials.

Like you, I'm short on time at this time of the year...however I'm making good progress toward getting a real flickering candle effect! The tutorial you may be thinking of generates a lovely candle flame, however it also uses fades and other effects not supported by Flash.

My approach is actually using three separate vector images, superimposed and individually animated. They really do look like small dancing candle flames, however I haven't had time to create 21 separate shapes and change them in multiple frames to get the effect...sigh...

Hopefully I'll get it right before Hanukkah!
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Will

I originally made this animation as a gif in December 2000. I just exported it as a flash in Xtreme Pro...the file size is a little large, must be the plasma fills. It also wouldn't export my four and three color fills in the flames and candles.

Joel

Very nice Menorah, Joel.

I haven't given up on making better flames for my candles!
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Will

Egg and Will, the candle stick works, perhaps could tone down a bit of the brassy tones (I always go too far with it too), but the candles themselves are like little blow torches. The effect would be perfect for a blow torch in fact. I always think I know what something looks like until I draw it, then I realize that I only stored some of the data in my head of what I needed to draw and item and have to go back and look at the real thing. Best way is to get out a real candle and observe and then from the observations of watching it burn and flicker, encorporate that. I am not criticizing, trying to brainstorm it out. There is a way to do it I'm sure. Just a longer learning curve here. This may be a step closer, maybe someone can perfect it a bit more than I did.

Adding the animation to the background image.



The flame as done above was duplicated across, it is the same animation, but made smaller and slightly up, down, flopped, etc. for the seven flames. The Candle stick, brought the saturation down a bit and faded into the wax tops I had done before.

Wow, Sally...

That's EXACTLY the look I wanted. It is so nice. The flickering flames are perfect.

Thanks so very much!
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Will

Once the animation sequence was done on that, Will, I was able to use the eye icon and the arrow icon, and resize everything and ctrl-drag-right-click to duplicate the seven flames. Easier than doing it any other way, this also keeps all the animations on the right frame as well as maintaining the tweening. Xara is really well-thought out.

I found out from a pointer Egg gave me that to use something in the background, I should use a bitmap, so the black wouldn't show up behind the candles for the background until it was changed to a bitmap copy and the vector deleted, however, the glow behind the candles worked as and eliptical fill.

Anyway, glad you like it. There are probably as many solutions to this problem as there are Xara Artists.

Sally,

That is a very accurate rendition of a candle flame. To capture the slow transformation of a flame is very difficult but I think you've captured it perfectly here.

as Egg already said: a perfectly flame, Sally

:) Remi

Bravo, Sally! :-)

Gary

Thanks everyone for the compliments. Best is to observe what we draw first hand. The rest is the brilliance of Xara. I am a good technician. Much of what I do, anyone can do.

Wow, love the flames, Sally!

I've made my own set of vector flames for Flash. A royal pain in the ***, but I wanted to animate each flame individually, so they would be slightly different. Each of the seven flames has four individually named segments, not counting the wick.

Thanks to Sally, Bill and Bulldog, I got lots of ideas, and have been having a lot of fun and learning a lot of new stuff.

Took lots of experimenting, but I'm happy with it.
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Will

Sally and Will, both are nice animations.

Thanks, Bill...

If it had not been for the ideas and suggestions that you and others gave me, I'd never have gotten to that point!
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Will

Good work on the flames, Will!

Thanks, Allison...

I really enjoyed the HOURS I spent doing them. I have them now saved in an XXP file so that I can re-use them whenever I need a candle. The best part was how very much I learned in the process. I think I made virtually every possible mistake along the way, and learned something from every one of them.
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Will

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WolfMoonHP

I think I made virtually every possible mistake along the way, and learned something from every one of them.

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Ain't that the truth. :D

Will, a wise man once told me that an expert is someone that knows how to correct mistakes. The expert learned how to do that by making every mistake possible within their chosen field :)

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Originally Posted by Soquili

Will, a wise man once told me that an expert is someone that knows how to correct mistakes. The expert learned how to do that by making every mistake possible within their chosen field :)

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LOL...then I should be WELL on my way to becoming an expert! :D
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Will