The idea behind it was that it was meant to look like when you take a sparkler and move it around really fast in the air – the glow leaves a line of light behind it for a few seconds.

After a fair bit of messing around I finally came up with something I think looked pretty cool, which you can check out here…

The way it works is kinda simple, but in a slightly complicated way… if that makes sense..

Basically, I created a round BitmapData that would act as a ‘brush’. It was a simple circles with blurred edges. I then had a second transparent BitmapData that would act a canvas for the brush to draw into.

Every frame of the animation I would check for a change in the brush position, and if it had moved I would draw a line between the two points with the brush. Unfortunately, there isn’t a built in way to draw lines using a BitmapData so I used some basic math to divide up the line I wanted to draw into equal steps, then drew the brush BitmapData at each step along the line.

That gave me a basic soft edged brush effect, but it didn’t fade out over time. That is where the BlurFilter comes in.

On every frame I would apply a BlurFilter to the canvas BitmapData – I can’t remember the exact amount, but it wasn’t too big. By itself it didn’t do too much to the canvas, but by applying it every frame, the blur would accumulate and slowly fade the drawing out to transparent.

That’s the basic gist of it.

To make it look a bit cooler, I actually ran two versions of this effect over the top of each other – one for a soft glow, and the other for a hard edged central colour – I thought it gave it a nicer effect. I also started adding in some basic scale changes depending on how fast the mouse was moving, so the lines would thin out on fast motions

You can download a FlashDevelop project here that has all of the assets I used – Light Writing Project

I think it looks pretty cool and it worked with the designs really well. Just to make things tricky though, they made be rebuild the whole effect using AS2 so that it could be used in some banner campaigns. I had forgotten how much better AS3 is

I think the main influence though was when my car was broken into for the second time – for no apparent reason. They didn’t take anything. They just busted up my locks and threw all my stuff around.

Anyway, I digress.

If you are angry at society as a whole, these are the tees for you.

They come in two styles:

• Figures
• Angry Text

This design and my other t-shirt designs can be found on RedBubble.

The Part-time Super Villain t-shirt design (and my other t-shirt designs) can be found on RedBubble.

At the time I wanted to tell him to wake up to himself, but realising that such an exchange could possible end in anger or violence, I decided a t-shirt design would be more fitting.

It’s a little bit hard to see here, but the last two evolution images are labeled with the words ‘you’ and ‘me’ (me being the more evolved).

The You and Me t-shirt design (and my other t-shirt designs) can be found on RedBubble.

Some people have likened it to the fighting words of the old Batman TV series, which was not my intention, but still, I can see their point.

I am intending on creating some other shirts in a similar vein one day.

The KAPOW t-shirt design (and my other t-shirt designs) can be found on RedBubble.

There isn’t really much to the design. I’ve just basically taken a movie rating sticker and positioned it on a tee. I did however adjust the warning to better describe the wearer.

I’ve done three different ratings so far:

• M Rating
• MA 15+ Rating
• R Rating

This and my other t-shirt designs can be found on RedBubble.

For the rest of you though, let me explain. When you expand the equation rdr² you get rdrr, which when read out loud sounds like Har Dee Ha Ha.

Apart from that humour, I tried to make it so that it looked like a modern and stylish clothing brand so that it wouldn’t look too nerdy. The hope was that people would think it was a new brand, and when they asked me what it means I would giggle to myself.

The rdr² t-shirt design (and my other t-shirt designs) can be found on RedBubble.

The Fish t-shirt design (and my other t-shirt designs) can be found on RedBubble.

I couldn’t help but wonder, what would a square peg do if it came across a round whole…. probably nothing.

The Square Peg t-shirt design (and my other t-shirt designs) can be found on RedBubble.

The original design ‘my other shirt is also black’ was created for a friend who always seems to wear black tees. After it was created, the other designs just seem to come naturally.

The three current designs are:

• My Other Shirt Is Also Black
• My Other Shirt Is Black
• My Other Shirt Is White

These designs are perfect for letting other people know what the clothing you’re not wearing looks like.

These and my other t-shirt designs can be found on RedBubble.