Quick Links: Part 1 | Part 2
Here's a behind the scenes look at my Silverlight Christmas Card, which may be the first Silverlight Christmas card ever.
Inspiration
Every great animation starts with inspiration and, for "Christmas is Going to the Dogs," that inspiration started with fellow AISer Pete Brown's "Christmas 2.0" blog post.
In the post, he reminisces about the Christmastimes of his youth:
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I have fond memories of the "TV Special". You know, the holiday specials that were preceded by the funky drum and horns intro with the swirled-in "special" text
The YouTube video he linked to was a clip of the old time CBS "Special" bumper, complete with the funky soundtrack.
This brought back my own childhood memories of sitting in front of the TV knowing that the next 30 minutes of TV were to be once-a-year event. This was the time to adjust the rabbit ear antenna, sit down with cup of hot chocolate in hand and enjoy a rare moment of kid-focused TV.
This, of course, was several years BC (Before Cable) and you had to adjust the antenna based on the channel you were watching.
We always lived in a place that had a direct line of sight to the World Trade Center or the Empire State Building, so getting a good signal was never really a problem.
But when the show you *really* wanted to watch was only on once a year, you took no chances.
It's not quite the same today. There are DVD's, YouTube videos, On-Demand, and scores of cable networks devoted solely to children's programming.
So, seeing the CBS Special Bumper inspired me to create a Silverlight version.
The rest of the card's inspiration came from hearing the song “Christmas is Going to the Dogs“ on Special X-Mas, XM Radio's channel for “novelty“ Christmas music.
Nuts and Bolts
I had done many an animation in Flash, some of them even starring the same dogs.
This time, however, I wanted to put Silverlight through its paces, create something fun, and see how Flash animation skills port over to Silverlight.
In the end, my XAML file ended up a hefty 183k long: a fact that may be scary at first.
But remember, it's just XML and XML can be quite verbose. Interestingly enough, the XAML zips down to a svelte 6k.
Keep in mind, that unlike Flash, media is not embedded inside one file. There's not one single file to download. So, that 183k that does not include the images or the music.
There are ways to Zip all the XAML and Media into a single file, but I didn't do that here. I will definitely do that for any future projects.
So, what we have here is XML, plain and simple, just a lot of it.
Stay tuned for tomorrow where I'll start dissecting the solution, starting with the Special Animation.
Flash developers take note: this was the part of the project that I missed Flash the most.
I'll be posting the source code shortly, but if you're impatient, use Silverlight Spy to take a look at how the scene is constructed.
You'll see three canvases: one for the Intro, the Feature Presentation, and the credits.
I'll be back tomorrow to explain how they all fit together.