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São Paulo - Brazil Interface Developer |
INTERVIEW 21 Created on October29, 2007 |
| RELATED LINKS: www.zeh.com.br, labs.zeh.com.br |
| 1) HI, ZEH. PLEASE TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR WORK. My name's Zeh Fernando. I'm 30 years old and I live in São Paulo, Brazil. I'm an interface developer, working mostly with the Flash platform: basically, I receive some art done by an art director or a designer and then make it work on the browser. I've been working with interface development for 13 years, and specifically with Flash since version 2. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartoonist, and later a videogame programmer. I never got to be either of them but today I'm happy to be doing the kind of work I love.  2) FLASH… WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT? IS FLASH TAKING OVER THE WEB DEVELOPMENT/DESIGN MARKET AS BEING THE BEST TOOL TO BE USED NOWADAYS WITH ITS RIA TECHNOLOGY ALONG WITH OTHERS FROM ITS FAMILY? It has been gaining ground rapidly over the past few years, but I don't see that as taking over. For rich interfaces - engaging websites, a mix between content and experience - it's definitely the best option right now, but there are so many different problems that require different solutions that I don't think we'll ever see a platform for everything that can be done on the web. Flash is great and it's my platform of choice, but it doesn't go straight against things like HTML. 3) WHAT THING OR THINGS YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE INSPIRATION FOR YOUR WORK? Apart from the standard “everything I see!” answer, I'd have to say motion graphics, the demoscene, and specially, videogames. Comics, as well as science fiction books, also had a big impact on me over the years, so they're an important part of what I am today. 4) MATTER OF FACT, CAN YOU TELL WHICH MAIN PROJECT THAT YOU’RE MARRIED WITH RIGHT NOW? Commercially wise, I'm on a change of seasons phase, in-between projects. I'm starting some work for Firstborn, but nothing specific or quite ready for public view yet. Other than that, I'm doing some hard work for my college degree, building an interactive installation using VVVV, C++ and HLSL. 5) DO YOU HAVE A PROJECT YOU CONSIDER WAS THE HARDEST AND THE BEST PROJECT YOU HAVE EVER DONE? The hardest recent project was probably Still Alive/Natureza Viva - it was one of those projects that were quite hard but still fun to develop. And not only I learned a lot from it, but the end result is very cool. So I think I'd say it was also the best project I've done recently.  6) WHAT STEPS DO YOU MAKE TO START WORKING ON A PROJECT? I usually start by making annotations of the website structure, based on the original project design, then planning each area separately. I then create some bogus data to be used by the website - creating the XML files that'll be used to have a better view of what I'll need to draw on the interface - and work from that, building the main navigation shell, main interface elements (menus), then specific content areas. Basically, building the website from the outside to the inside. 7) DO YOU USUALLY VISIT WEB COMMUNITIES, READ GOOD MAGAZINES OR ARTICLES RELATED TO DESIGN DAILY? Sometimes. I don't spend too much time with that, mainly because I don't have much free time available, but I visit the FWA website from time to time, read some technology/design-related blogs, and things like that. I don't usually visit communities like forums because of the low signal to noise ratio. Finally, I do read a few print magazines from time to time on my college's library, things like How Design and Computer Arts, but one that I've been really following recently is the Brazilian edition of Computer Arts. It's a godsend, we really needed something like that here. 8) JUST CURIOSITY. HOW MANY LINES OF CODE YOU ESTIMATE YOU WRITE ON A SINGLE DAY? Hard to say because there's some time spent with debugging and planning, and some times you'll spend a few days getting like just half a dozen lines of code right. But from a quick estimate, I'd say something like one hundred lines of code per day on the beginning of a project. Later in development this number drops as time is spent more in testing, debugging and fixing things than in building. |
9) HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN FOR ANY KIND OF BOOK, MAGAZINE OR SOMETHING PRINTED LIKE THAT? I've contributed three chapters to a book in the past - O'Reilly's Flash Hacks by Sham Banghal - and was interviewed for Web Design magazine (in Brazil) a couple of times. No articles though, it's one of those things you have to put some time into it.  10) WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO FOR RELAXING WHEN YOU’RE NOT IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER WORKING? In front of the computer, playing. Also riding my bicycle, reading comics, reading science fiction, or playing videogames. 11) LIST 2 OF THE SEVERAL FLASH DESIGN COMPANIES/STUDIOS YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE MOST INFLUENT OF FLASH HISTORY, AND THAT YOU PERSONALLY THINK ARE THE BEST IN THIS INDUSTRY. That's a tough one, so I'll do a split answer. Influential over the years, in a global sense, I think we could say Gabocorp's original website (even if it's, let's say, less than stellar today) and later, Yugo Nakamura with MONOcraft. It's hard to say who's the best today, as there's a number of studios with different alignments and solutions, but Yugo Nakamura is still pretty much a hero for me, and there are many great studios in North America, Europe, and Japan. In a local sense, I'd say Grafikonstruct, and more recently, Gringo have been the leaders in Flash development and as such the most influential ones. I consider them to be the two best in Brazil too. 12) NAME THE TOOLS/EXTENSIONS BEYOND FLASH YOU WORK WITH THE MOST PART OF YOUR DAY AND WHICH ONE IS THE ONE THAT CAN’T BE MISSING ON EACH PROJECT. It's hard to say. I've been using Photoshop and Illustrator since forever, so I can't live without them. I use FlashDevelop to write Actionscript code, and edit XML, HTML or TXT files, so it's also an integral part of my work. Of course, I use FireFox with a number of extensions for debugging. And curiously enough, some of the OpenOffice tools - Writer and Calc - are tools I use all the time too. If I had to pick one, though, it'd definitely be Photoshop. 13) ONCE YOU’RE INTO THE PROGRAMMING THING YOU GOT TO WORK HARD TO GET SOME FEEDBACK. TELL US A FEW WORDS FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO SUCCEED ON WHAT THEY DO. Do what you love and you'll love what you do. Nothing's too difficult once you know how to do it. Stay hungry. Listen to music while working. Lastly, the Flash development market worldwide is in dire need of competent people. This is field with hefty requirements as one has to like both the development and creative sides to succeed, but for those who are focused enough, there's also plenty of rewards. THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR WORDS AND KEEP UP THE AMAZING WORK. Thank you!
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