1) How did you first get into design and development?

I was about 12 years old when a friend, Mike Lattiak, and I discovered a program called Hypercard on the Mac. It was this interesting combination of a slideshow / interface / drawing app. The program used slides to represent different pages. Each slide could have drawings, buttons, and interaction linking to other slides, this allowed for game-like mechanics. Sound a lot like something? Flash?

So each of us would go home after school and create Hypercard games, or rather the closest things to games that we could make without programming. These ultimately became quite overwhelming, one game totaled in at over 1,000 frames. After completion we would copy them onto floppy disks, and exchange with each other on the school bus. We would then go to our respective homes and play the other’s game.

There was a sort of collaborative competition between us each trying to outdo the other. Later that year we came across Geocities and Angelfire on the relatively new Internet. These were essentially the equivalent of what Wordpress and Blogger are today platforms for personal sites. Naturally, the competition grew from Hypercard into websites. Today Mike Lattiak works at Harmonix, on titles like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

2) Please tell us about your previous portfolio “Ludosabato”, what’s the story behind the name and the concept?

The word itself stemmed from “Ludovico il Sabato,” a made up Italian name which would serve as an alter ego. I was 15 at the time and frustrated with my suburban, mundane origins and name Mike Tucker. Over time it has just seemed silly, and I recently switched over to mike-tucker.com

3) What applications do you use the most?

For the design end of things– it’s the common gamut: Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects as the main imaging tools. A little Cinema 4D, although I wish I had the time to learn a stronger program.

Also being a developer, I work a lot with Flash. Ever since the shift to Actionscript 3.0 it has become significantly more complex than the days of Flash 3 and 4. Oddly enough I try to use Flash as little as possible mainly for designing movie clips and laying out objects. Then have all the necessary MovieClips exported with Linkage. Adobe Flex Builder (or Eclipse) does most of the heavy lifting. You can have your class files, SVN, and assets in one place. Flex will can handle debugging, errors, profiling, and compiling. Most of my time is spent here, coding.

4) In 2005, When Adobe acquired Macromedia, did the acquisition have a impact on your work?

Ultimately, I believe the acquisition will hurt creative industries more than help. Adobe CS3 was a great departure in terms of integrating a lot of features and improving compatibility. The problem, with CS4 for instance, is that Adobe has no real competitors, and thus has no real incentive to push as hard as they used to. As a result, the rate of improvement will slow down and we won’t see much innovation over the next few years.

5) Do you feel that Adobe have done a good job in regards to releasing ActionScript 3.0? What would you change if you had a chance?

Actionscript 2.0 sort of reached a glass ceiling in terms of capability. A lot of the foundation was sloppy– dating back to the days when Macromedia first acquired Flash. This made the code inefficient, and as a result Flash websites reached a point where they could not grow any further. They ultimately had to dump 2.0 in exchange for something much faster and more capable. The sacrifice, however, was that the code was no longer easy to learn.

Part of the success of Flash was how easy it was for a kid to pick up and learn how to use. With 3.0 you almost always need a dedicated developer on the project. This is why we are seeing such a high demand for flash developers in the web field right now. At this point I wouldn’t change anything, but it took me about a year to become entirely comfortable working with the new language. It’s just a shame that kids will no longer be able to see Flash as a creative outlet, because of the learning curve involved.

6) CSS and javascript frameworks (such as jQuery) have come a long way since the early days, do you feel more and more desigers and developers are moving away from using Flash?

The Browser Wars currently have a battle waging as to who can handle Javascript the fastest. With Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox 3.1 seeing a 1000% increase in performance, it’s a good indication that people will want to take advantage of the new possibilities. On the mobile end of things, of the two leaders, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, neither can display Flash. With mobile browsing beginning to spike it’s another sign than Flash is becoming less relevant on the web.

7) For your personal projects, do you feel web usability is crucial? And what is your opinion on web usability in general?

Web usability is just like any other theory, in my opinion. There are solid principles to stand by in certain circumstances, but nothing is absolute. Some of the most successful websites on the internet have terrible design and usability: Myspace, Youtube, and even the new Facebook in my mind. My personal portfolio is HTML simply out of familiarity and compatibility. The content itself ranges from physics-based layouts to 3D explorations. As a designer and developer, the primary goal should be identifying the content, and then choosing the most appropriate platform for executing the idea.

8) What and who is BASE/APEX?

After completing college, Damon Zucconi, Milan Zrnic, and I began throwing around the idea of starting a company. We got an apartment together in Brooklyn, NY and called the company BASE/APEX. In order to pay bills I got a job at Syrup NYC as a Designer/Developer, but this took up more energy than I anticipated. Unfortunately B/A never really gained enough momentum to get off the ground, but remains a platform for collaborations between the three of us.

9) You also used to work for Syrup NYC and Big Spaceship, is there a lot of pressure when working with such big agencies, do you get a lot of creative freedom when working at an agency?

Understanding the mechanics of an agency is just as important as the work itself. Every agency operates differently, and if you aren’t able to position yourself correctly in the company then you probably won’t be happy with what you are doing. After working alone for so long, it’s hard to transition into an environment that is so dependent on working together.

11) What is the hardest part of your job?

If you grew up teaching yourself these various skills, there is a bit of a personal attachment to them. It’s almost as if the skills themselves were the pieces of work that you’d been working towards. And then to put a price tag on that, and give it to someone you don’t necessarily respect. These situations can be frustrating, especially when there’s little or nothing that you can do to stop it.

12) You also develop sites using Papervision 3D and Box2D, what’s that like?

If I could describe the learning curve of AS3, I would say that the hardest part is the beginning. Once you are familiar and comfortable with the way of working, it becomes easy to hop into various frameworks. For the 2008 Ludosabato website I used Papervision 3D to create a 3d explorable environment. And most recently, Box2d allowed me explore a physics-based design for the NUURO website. Neither of which would have been possible without the hundreds of hours put in by original authors. I believe the phrase “On the Shoulders of Giants” is applicable.

13) Some designers find it hard to be a programmer and a designer in one, what are the key factors in being a good programmer and designer?

Keeping up with the newest standards in the design and programming worlds is the hardest part. Rather than seeing programming as only a means to an end, you have to genuinely want to learn, and enforce it regularly. There are few moments of fulfillment, but coming up with an idea and also being able to build it is priceless.

14) Where do you mostly get your inspiration from?

Good question, but to have a simple, systematic answer would be paradoxical. I think the trick is to stimulate your head in as many ways possible, hoping for something to come along and consume your thoughts. And then sure enough, when it bites, capture as much of it as possible. It’s too easy to lose these moments, notepads are great for just this job.

15) Do you develop sites or applications for the iPhone?

A few weeks ago I went ahead and purchased an iPhone Dev license. Coming from a web background, the switch can be a bit intimidating especially running into things like Open GL and C#. Barriers aside, the iPhone platform could prove to be an important platform in the near future.

16) What kind of interesting projects are you working on at the moment?

With the release of the Nuuro site and Hugo&Marie it sort of brings me to a plateau that I’ve been working towards. I am also in between jobs at the moment which is affording me time to catch up on reading, experimenting, and remembering why I got into this industry in the first place.