Behold–the picture moves as if by magic!

I’ve just dis­cov­ered the won­ders of Flash ani­ma­tion–pret­ty cool stuff!

As a result, the pic­ture of Paula and I on the top right of the page now con­tains a playable video. Just click on the green arrow in the pic­ture so I can greet you and explain our vision for min­istry!

I’m still try­ing to get this Flash thing fig­ured out. In par­tic­u­lar, I’d like to have a mes­sage pop up when your mouse moves across the pho­to, so if any­one out there is a Flash guru, I’d love to learn from your wis­dom!

In case you’re curi­ous about Flash your­self, the three most help­ful sites I’ve found are the offi­cial Macro­me­dia Flash site, Flash Kit, and Flash Com­po­nents.

For the record, I was shocked at how sim­ple it was to do.

1) I set up my handy Log­itech Web­cam.
2) I down­loaded the free beta copy of Win­dows Movie Mak­er 2 (which real­ly rocks, it’s a legit­i­mate com­peti­tor with iMovie).
3) I winged it and then edit­ed it.
4) I import­ed it into Macro­me­dia Flash MX.
5) I used the Satay Method to embed it in my page.

I was done! Now I just need to learn a lit­tle bit more about Flash (like how to ani­mate text) and reshoot my video to make it a lit­tle tighter (like I said, I winged the script–and I think it shows in one or two spots).

Over­all, though, I’m pret­ty hap­py.

UPDATE: I tweaked the video (and was able to trim its size by 33%), so now I just need to decide how much more I want to do before I leave well enough alone…