This site was still done with Flash 4, because it was still too early to expect a high adoption rate of Flash 5. So I used the experience I gained from programming in Flash 5 to try to push Flash 4 to the limit with dynamically created menus and content. Because a lot of things still had to be updated manually, I tried to make it as simple as possible, especially because I refused to update the site myself.
The coolest thing about the site were the car galleries which featured custom animations for each car. For the x06 series, each car was set against an abstract background and then the rest of the image was built up in 4 steps based on the user’s actions. For the x07 series, the car was set in an enviroment and then the enviroment came alive in 4 different ways based on the user’s actions. Completely unnecessary, but at least it made some use of the huge space the car’s picure took up and it made the site extra cool.
One other achievement was the Flash interface for the accessories store. I don’t think that had been done before. The biggest challenge was creating an easy system to manually update the product thumbnails. Luckily, the product line didn’t change very often.
With new investors in the game, Parsek moved location to the very center of Ljubljana. Everybody got a hefty raise, the offices were amazing and the company slowly started going very corporate. The site we did for Parsek was much more serious and informative, but still retained the youthful and playful, yet at times cynical attitude that defined the company. It featured the new “square” logo and the dotted world map with 3.26 written on it. The site was flash-enhanced HTML, the design echoing the new dotcom yuppie times – faceless young techno-junkies taking over the world is how I would describe it.
The first game I ever did is incidentally my favourite one. It was inspired by a game called “Milk the Cow”, where you had to fly over a grass plane and milk as many cows with your mouse.
Renault Slovenija was the first major project for Parsek and it has proven to be the most crucial and faithful one throughout the years. We did the first version in collaboration with Studio Marketing, who were doing all the advertising work for Renault Slovenija. The greatest challenge was freeing ourselves from the dictate of Studio Marketing’s designers, who, coming from the print media design, weren’t able to grasp the concept of designing for the web just yet. Soon, they were pesuaded to back off a bit, and the resulting website was very interesting. Weird, but in a good way.
This was one of those never-ending stories where I’m lucky that my involvement was minimal. It was a huge project for a tough client and it took forever to make. Basically, I only did a few Flash gadgets for the site, like the interactive maps and a webcam application. Pretty basic stuff, really, but at a time when Flash was used for “kewl” animated menus and buttons, these gadgets were actually useful.
The very first client work I’ve ever done was this site for the Hepatitis B awareness and innoculation campaign, conducted by the Institute of Public Health. I’m completely amazed that it’s still online, considering it was done at a time when I still had a lot to learn about Flash and other internet technologies, so the production was basically me and Ozi trying to figure out how to make a pull-down menu in Flash and me taking the programmers’ instructions on how to post a form. I was also fiddling with some audio software back then, so I created a groovy but a bit menacing sound loop for the site.