newbie with a pop-up problem!!

"Character walking" doesn't sound like a beginner's job.

If it's supposed to walk all over the browser window (I guess this is what
you mean by "host sites page"), video with alpha channel is not an option IMHO,
this will use much too much bandwidth.

You will need to generate a few keyframe sequences for steps into different
directions, then replicate these with actionscript to simulate walking.
Depending on whether we're talking about an animated "character" or a real-life
character, this could either be done with short video loops, pictures or all
drawn by hand as in cartoon animation.

To make it walk "all over" the window, you will need a stage size filling the
whole browser window, with wmode=transparent, probably causing some browser
display problems, unfortunately.

The alternative route I could see is a short video loop (the way you probably
thought) of the character walking in the same place, which is shown in a small
Flash <object> (not much larger than the character itself).
This small Flash object would be inside a <div> that gets cleverly
repositioned by javaScript. Don't expect Dreamweaver to be able to help you
with that though. This requires careful hand programming both in Flash and in
HTML/javaScript.

Probably try to simplify the request. It would be a lot easier if the walking
could only happen in a defined horizontal space, e.g. walk across a banner.

Good luck
Wolf
 >> Stay informed about: newbie with a pop-up problem!! 

thanks for the replies....

i guess i was a bit vague earlier!

what we have is a Toy (we distribute them) and we have been asked by one of
our online stores to provide them with "a pop-up that walks across the screen!"

My take on this is that i would rather the toy walked over the existing site,
rather than within a visible box. I have no problems with it walking in a
defined horizontal plane, as long as we don't have a frame around the toy.

I realise the complete job is way beyond my skills, but as i do have the
ability to film and extract alpha channels etc, i was trying to guage how much
of the task i could complete before handing it over to others.

Also, being a difficult concept to put into words, i wasn't sure if there was
a correct name for what i am trying to achieve, something i could say to the
"pro" and them know what i'm on about!

thanks

adam
 >> Stay informed about: newbie with a pop-up problem!! 

If it's a toy, it probably walks rather mechanically, so a few photos with the
necessary tweens in between them will be enough. Stay away from video then.
What probably sounds the easiest for you is a quite difficult part of the
task: "don't have a frame around the toy".
As mentioned before, that requires a transparent Flash movie.
Good luck
Wolf
 >> Stay informed about: newbie with a pop-up problem!! 

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]Wolf van Ween[/b][/b][/i]
What probably sounds the easiest for you is a quite difficult part of the
task: "don't have a frame around the toy".
As mentioned before, that requires a transparent Flash movie.
Good luck[/q]

Au Contrair !! I have realised all along that the lack of a frame is going to
be the difficult part. Obtaining the individual images is the easy part (i'm a
video editor by trade!!)

thanks for the advice
adam
 >> Stay informed about: newbie with a pop-up problem!!