1. Launch Adobe Flash CS3
2. CTRL+F7 to toggle the components window on and off (you want it visible). Or use Window - Components
3. Drag a button onto your canvas.
4. Give it an InstanceName of myButton.
5. Change the button’s label from Label to Hello.
6. Drag a Label onto your canvas.
7. Give it an InstanceName of myLabel.
8. Change the label’s text from Label to Snoozing or use any other text you like.The numbered steps above are labelled onto the screen shot below to indicate where your tasks are located.
   Your window will look something like this ..
9. Click on your canvas (but not on the button or label) and press F9 to toggle on the Actions - Frame window. If you see this message, read this instruction again and do it right! “Current selection cannot have actions applied to it.”
10. In the Action - Frame window, enter this code …myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, sayHello);function sayHello(e:MouseEvent):void
    {
    myLabel.text = “Hello World!”;
    }
11. Save your work to a well named folder and give your file a meaningful file name.
12. Press CTRL+ENTER to run your Flash Application. If it doesn’t work correctly, look for mistakes in your code (copy and paste it to reduce the chances or error). Look for mis-spellings of myButton and myLabel, both in the code and in the Properties Window.
13. Here is the code with explanatory comments.
    
    // This line makes the button listen or wait for mouse clicks.
    // When the button feels a mouse click, it calls the sayHello function.
    myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, sayHello);// This is the sayHello function.
    // When this function is called, it sets the text property of myLabel to “Hello World!”.
    // e:MouseEvent is the click experienced by the button.
    // void is used here because this function, although useful, does not return a value.
    function sayHello(e:MouseEvent):void
    {
    myLabel.text = “Hello World!”;
    }  

     

14. Optional tasks: Make your canvas smaller and change the background colour.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Want to kill some time playing games but don’t have or want to spill the cash on a proprietary game? Look to further and invest only your time in trying out these great open source games!

Action

BZFlag
BZFlag is a free online multiplayer cross-platform open source 3D tank battle game. The name originates from “Battle Zone capture the Flag”. It runs on Irix, Linux, *BSD, Windows, Mac OS X, and many other platforms.
http://www.bzflag.org/

Frets on Fire

Frets on Fire is a Finnish music video game created by Unreal Voodoo in which players use the keyboard to play along with scrolling on-screen musical notes to complete a song, and is a clone of the Guitar Hero video game series.
http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/

Classic

Frozen Bubble

Frozen Bubble is a superb open source rendition of the classic arcade title ‘Bust a Move’. This version features single and multiplayer modes as well as network multiplayer and level editor capabilities.
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/

Secret Maryo Chronicles

Secret Maryo Chronicles is an Open Source two-dimensional platform game with a style designed similar to classic sidescroller games.
http://www.secretmaryo.org

SuperTux

SuperTux is a classic 2D jump’n run sidescroller game in a style similar to the original SuperMario games. The Milestone1 release of SuperTux features 9 enemies, 26 playable levels, software and OpenGL rendering modes, configurable joystick and keyboard input, new music and completly redone graphics.

Open Yahtzee

Open Yahtzee is an open-source version of the classic dice game Yahtzee. It is built to work across many different operating systems and platforms.

FPS

OpenArena

OpenArena is an open source first-person shooter game based on the ioquake3 fork of the id tech 3 engine. OpenArena’s gameplay is the exact same as Quake III Arena - score frags to win the game using a balanced set of weapons each designed for different situations.

Warsaw

Warsow is a free standalone first person shooter game for Windows and Linux. It is based on the Qfusion 3D engine (a modification of the Quake 2 GPL engine), and aimed on the competitive scene, or the e-sports community.

Alien Arena 2008

Alien Arena a fast and frantic first person shooter that combines the best of gameplay from games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III.

Savage

Savage: The Battle for Newerth is a fantasy/science fiction computer game that combines aspects of Real-time strategy and First-person shooter into one game. The producers of the game define it as a ‘Real Time Strategy Shooter’, or ‘RTSS’. It takes place in the far future when man has (after an apocalypse) rebuilt society, but is threatened by intelligent beasts.

Sauerbraten

Sauerbraten (a.k.a. Cube 2) is a free multiplayer/singleplayer FPS, built as a major redesign of the Cube FPS. The aim of this game is to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game, to create fun gameplay and an elegant engine.

Nexuiz

Nexuiz focuses on bringing the FPS genre back to the basics with quick, lethal battles and balanced weaponry. As of the current release there are 9 weapons and 24 official maps, as well as 15 player models, with an average of 2 skins each.
http://alientrap.org/nexuiz/

Tremulous

Tremulous blends a team based FPS with elements of an RTS. Players can choose from 2 unique races, aliens and humans. Players on both teams are able to build working structures in-game like an RTS.

Platform

irrlamb

irrlamb is a platform game, in which the player moves a ball through a 3D terrain, it involves a lot of physics and challenging gameplay!

Wormux

Wormux is a free and open-source clone of the classic game Worms. The teams are styled after the mascots of various free software projects, such as GNU, Linux, FreeBSD, KDE, GIMP, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Workrave, NuFW and SPIP.
http://www.wormux.org

Simulation

LinCity NG

LinCity-NG is a 3D City building Simulation Game for Linux-based operating systems. It is a polished and improved version of the classic LinCity game.

FlightGear Flight Simulator

FlightGear is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator project featuring 20, 000 real world airports, correct runway markings and placements, world scenary, accurate terrain and more.
Strategy

Freeciv

Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the stone age to the space age…

Scorched 3D

Scorched 3D is a turn-based artillery game modeled after the classic DOS game Scorched Earth “The Mother Of All Games”.

Battle for Wesnoth

The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. Fight a desperate battle to reclaim the throne of Wesnoth, or take hand in any number of other adventures.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Let’s explore the various methods of using animation to make money, a few I’m sure you expect and perhaps a couple you haven’t yet considered. How long does it take to earn a living making cartoons?

Of course you can join an animation studio and earn a living that way, but we’re more interested in starting from scratch in your basement and building your own audience. We are going to assume that you release your cartoons on a regular basis on a website that you own, slowly building your fan base (or very fast if you’re JibJab and it’s an election year).

It may take up to 1 to 2 years or more for any particular item to earn you $1000 a month. $12,000 a year is not especially a living wage, I realize, but it’s a nice round number that will help you appropriately gauge the amount of effort required.

Advertising

The easiest and most straight-forward way of earning money is to allow advertisers the ability to place ads on your website. The downside of advertising is how popular you need to be in order to make a living off of it, taking at least three years to become truly viable.

1. Adsense

Google’s flagship breadwinner is familiar to most people, and quite easy to install. Beginning sites often draw 100% of their revenue from Adsense, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Once you start to build an audience it would be wise to branch out into other money making options.

2. AdBrite

AdBrite takes its cue from Adsense in many respects. You register on their site and are given code to add to your website which will in turn display their ads. Where AdBrite differs from Adsense is that you, as the advertiser, can set the price of the ad space that you’re selling. This is a great idea and it can work, however you really need to have the traffic to back it up in order to make money with this advertising system.

3. Project Wonderful

The creatively named Project Wonderful was created with the small media developer in mind. Web comics and animated sites seem to be performing the best. They use an auction model to create a solid supply/demand ad system. Once you sign up and place their code on your site visitors will see what it would cost to display an ad. Pay more than the lowest priced ad and yours will be displayed.

Affiliates

There are programs that can be easily added to your website that will pay you if a visitor performs a specific action. For example, if a visitor clicks on an ad and then purchases a product you would earn a percentage of that sale. Unless you find a specific affiliate program that is too perfect to pass up I recommend waiting until you’ve built some decent traffic before expecting these ads to perform well and reliably earn income.

Affiliate marketing sites are generally more complicated to setup and track than advertising sites. The following affiliate programs each offer hundreds of merchants to wade through. It helps if you have an idea of what you’re after before starting the search, or you may quickly find yourself overwhelmed.

1. Commission Junction

One of the oldest affiliate marketing programs available is Commission Junction. You can apply for many different programs, hopefully finding one or two that will suit your site the best.

2. ClixGalore.com

There are many merchants to choose from at ClixGalore.com, with a real variety of products. Toon Boom uses it as their affiliate marketer and I’ve had a bit of success selling the software here.

3. ShareaSale.com

ShareaSale.com is one of the newest affiliate marketers and they have done a solid job than their competitors of organizing their site.

4. Google Referral

Google referral is packaged within their Adsense site, but still offers a deep advertising opportunity just like Commission Junction or the other affiliate marketing programs. Click on AdSense Setup > Referrals, and you’ll be presented with many marketing companies that are vying for a spot on your website. Be sure to pick the most appropriate products.

5. Amazon

A common advertiser on the internet today, Amazon.com has done a great job of expanding from their initial “online bookstore” premise. They have many products from many sources, and will offer a 4 - 10% commission on referred purchases. It takes a lot of traffic to make this a worthwhile endeavor, but is certainly attainable.

T-Shirts

Technically a part of the affiliate programs, t-shirts are specifically called out because animation and t-shirts share a very similar audience. They are also some of the most popular programs available. It helps that they’re just plain fun to look at.

1. Busted Tees

Busted Tees is great at having extremely topical products. Busted Tees is also a good source for movie or TV show t-shirts, such as SuperBad and the Office.

2. Nerdy Shirts

As the name implies, Nerdy Shirts has a more geeky bent to it. They specialize in video game and technology related t-shirts and accessories. Pick out a shirt or two that matches your site and you can link to them directly, which will increase the selling rate.

3. Snorg Tees

The most unusual t-shirts of the bunch, Snorg Tees do everything it can to differentiate themselves from other t-shirt shops by targeting the odder sides of life. Most have a retro feel to them, and that can play well on the internet.

4. Thinkgeek

Thinkgeek is a great source for gaming/geeky/coding t-shirts, in addition to lots of excellent office toys. Considered the premier store to buy swag, Thinkgeek is ideal for anybody with multiple computers (most of us, I believe).

Merchandising

Selling products for other companies are all fine and good, but what about selling your own t-shirts and merchandise? You’ll have more creative freedom as well as pricing options. Plus, the first time you see somebody wearing a t-shirt with your logo on it feels pretty amazing.

1. Cafe Press

Cafe Press is very easy to use, but the quality of their products suffers as a result. Their method of slapping a label with your logo or character on it and then shipping it out often feels cheap, compared with their competitors. What you gain in convenience you lose in quality.

2. Spreadshirt.com

Creating a Spreadshirt.com store to match the look and feel of your own site is a relatively simple process. There are many options in creating custom t-shirts and apparel that make the process slightly on the complicated side, hence the intermediate rating.

Sell Artwork

A path that I truly respect is that of selling artwork. You could draw a character, or paint a background for a project and then sell it on eBay, or directly from your site with Paypal. If you create an animation that becomes popular, selling the background plates could become quite lucrative.

Animation Festivals

There are many kinds of animation festivals: online/offline, cash prizes/notoriety only, etc. Clearly for the purposes of this list you should care about the animation festivals that offer money for prizes. The following sites do offer a pretty up-to-date list of festivals, along with contact information:

Toon Boom Festival Watch

AWN Festival List

With Out a Box

Music Videos

It’s so easy to let music inspire your thoughts. No doubt you’ve considered creating a music video. I think you’ll be surprised how possible this is. If you have a great idea, go to the band’s website and contact them (or their manager) and send them a brief message to pique their interest:

Hello,
My name is [NAME] and I’m an animator at [WEBSITE]. I really enjoy the song [SONG NAME] by [BAND NAME] and I was wondering if I could animate a music video for it.
I’ve had some success on the internet with the following cartoons:
[LIST 3ish CARTOON URLs]
If interested, I would love to send more details.

You’ll get back one of three responses:

Yes! Please start now!

Please tell us your idea

No, thank you

Note that money was not mentioned in this email. You may have to do one or two for free and build your reputation first. Be sure to maintain a professional tone and they will respect you and your work.

Profit Sharing Sites

The following sites will share the advertising revenue of your work with you, exposing your cartoons to their huge audiences. It can be rewarding to witness a popular series grow from nothing.

1. Revver.com

Revver.com offers a shared percentage of advertising revenue with you, the creator. Easy to use and submit to, they are quickly becoming one of the premier outlets for content creators of all kinds.

2. Metacafe.com

Another video submission site, Metacafe.com will offer a payout once your video reaches a certain number of views. The magic view number is pretty high, and requires that your animation reach a viral status to have a chance. That’s not impossible, but it is something you need to plan for. Their audience seems to be more worldwide than Revver.com, which could work in their favor moving forward.

Create eCards

Electronic greeting cards are an intriguing option for animators. CreativeHeads.net occasionally offers such job opportunities, but you are not tied down to a desk. You have the creative freedom to explore messages and animation styles that interest you and the general public will ultimately decide how much you will get paid. A key aspect of this option is to know your audience. Find out more about the demographic that would send an eCard and cater to those tastes if you want to find financial success in this market.

Sell Your Cartoon

1. Associated Content

Associated Content is a database of syndicated content. Once you submit your animation to them a third party will select it to play and will then pay you for the privilege. Most content here is topical and recent, so be sure your cartoon fits that mold before submitting it.

2. iStockPhoto

Well known for selling stock photography, iStockPhoto recently branched out to include Flash cartoons in their content. The animations that do the best are typically more generic, appealing to a broader audience. The same cartoons that do well as eCards would likely do well here.

3. Wallop

Intended to be a social network with all kinds of bells and whistles, developers are making a name for themselves on Wallop. Once you submit your widget and proposed price other members of the community will be able to purchase them from you. An intriguing concept that could have legs in the coming years, Wallop could become a solid platform for your cartoons.

Make a Pitch

Have you considered making a formal pitch to the powers that be? Having complete control over an entire series should be appealing to most animators, and the following options will let you explore those power-hungry dreams.

1. Aniboom

Aniboom is doing a good job of positioning themselves as a source of great animated content. Their current competition includes a chance at a $25,000 development deal for a series. If you have a multiple episode idea in your head, this could be your chance to finance it and get it completed.

2. Atom Films

Certainly a part of the upper echelon, Atom Films wants you to make a pitch to them for a one-time episode or a series. Many great online shows have made serious names for themselves here, and there’s no reason you can’t be a part of that legacy.

Contact Niche Sites

There are many sites that would love to feature your animations; they just don’t know it yet. Are you a sports fanatic? Do you love video games? What if you created a cartoon that featured those topics and then offered it to ESPN.com or Joystiq.com? It would appeal to their large audiences, and could easily turn into its own series if it’s well received. Be professional, persuasive and aggressive and they will listen to you.

Create Your Own Pay Per View Service

The most daunting item on this list is possibly the most lucrative. Creating your own pay per view service to showcase your cartoons requires a slew of abilities, including coding, marketing and extensive knowledge about distribution. On top of all that, you need a substantial audience to maintain a high level of production.

It’s conceivable that this could be the end goal for most small animation companies. After this the next natural step is syndication via more traditional markets (TV, DVD sales), at which point you are no longer a small company.

There are many ways to earn money by making cartoons, and this list that I presented to you today is by no means complete. Not all the options are suitable for your projects and you’ll have to take the time and explore each one individually to see what suits your needs the most.

Even though there are numerous ideas expressed today, it is no guarantee on a financial success and can take from 1 to 2 years to show some profit. None the less, I hope you’ll take this list and use it to conquer the world, and get your cartoons in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

Popularity: 56% [?]