Antti Kupila
Q: Please tell us a bit about yourself.
Antti Kupila, -84 vintage, from Finland and currently living in Amsterdam. I love everything that has to do with design, technology, art, music, psychology and a weird mashup of all the above. My business card has has “Sid Lee” written on it.
Q: How would you describe a day in your shoes?
At work? Changes a lot every day. Currently I oversee the technical production at Sid Lee Amsterdam which means the day consists of sipping cappuccinos, brainstorming, building prototypes in various languages and working with vendors. I also still write code almost every day but recently my focus has shifted a bit more towards the conceptual, strategic and creative sides. In my free time I still like to experiment and learn new things the player we’ve all learned to love has to offer.
Q: How long have you been using Flash/Flex?
I think Flash 5 came out just when I first started. In the beginning it was a bit on/off and just for fun. Now Flash has been bringing the food to my table for 4 or so years.
Q: What is it about Flash/Flex that you like the most? What would you change?
Definitely the connection between visual and technical creativity — the same tools can be used for animation and RIAs or any combination of both. Also I love the fact that it’s by nature on the web, which brings us a lot of goodies that we can use to enhance the products. I also like the fact that Adobe has been moving the player more to a platform, coming from an animation tool. This is something i’d like to see more of in the future too, giving us more low level control such as the new sound apis. Similar control over rendering would be sweet. I’d also like to see a mobile version of the player that’s actually useful and doesn’t require the developers to work separately in Flash Lite. Ideally it would adapt automatically to the resources available on the device it’s on.
Q: What was the most challenging thing you ever did using actionscript or an actionscript based library/framework?
The technical aspect is just one side of the coin, I think technology is at its best when it’s transparent to the user. The more magic, the better. To me the non-technical side of a technical project is often far more challenging to get right than the code itself. One of the more challenging technical tasks was the application framework built at AKQA San Francisco.
Q: What suggestions or sources of inspiration/motivation would you like to share with up and coming Developers?
Coffee is a good place to start. Seriously though I think it’s about coming up with a goal/problem, breaking it down into smaller goals and reaching them. With google and the intertubes we have all the information at our fingertips, it’s just a question of attitude if we reach our goals or not. The more you know, the more you’ll want to know. Don’t forget to keep on experimenting outside of commercial projects either, fun is a crucial ingredient and client requirements often restrict creativity.
Also I think it’s very important to listen to your own judgment and not think of anything as set in stone. Remember that the world was once flat. Einstein said “the important thing in life is to never stop questioning”.
RSS and twitter are my weapons of choice when it comes to getting inspiration. I don’t really go to sites like FWA for inspiration as to me that’s stuff that’s already been done. I think biology, psychology and nature are a much better source of inspiration. On Intelligence (isbn 0805078533) is an interesting book by Jeff Hawkins that talks about how the brain works and where something like creativity comes from. Highly recommended.
Oh, and don’t do something (cough..3d..cough) just because you can and everybody else is doing it. Technology is fun but it changes every day. It’s much more important to start with an idea and then use whatever tools are required to bring it to life.
