Hyped about Frogs

Back here I posted about my left hand finger exercises for guitar labelled, ‘Frogs.’
For.Really.Outstanding.Guitar.Skills. was a series of 10 level exercises that I began teaching to my students in 2009.

I had developed a whole series of lessons and charts but I needed a way to show both video & fingering in the one presentation, that anyone could access – easily.

That is where Hype comes in.

Tumult Hype is an app available on the Mac App Store that allows you to create HTML5 (read: sites, videos, animations etc that work on any platform or IOS device) utilising a simple, intuitive drag-n-drop interface.

I didn’t have 10 years to learn html and css etc. However, by using Tumult Hype, I can “…create beautiful HTML5 web content as well as Animations & interactive content that works on desktops, smartphones and iPads ~ with no coding required.” This program made my head spin with the possibilities of lesson resources, presentation materials and all the things I have always wanted to make ‘interactive’ but didn’t have the time or know-how for.

Furthermore, “…Tumult Hype’s keyframe-based animation system brings your content to life. Click “Record” and Tumult Hype watches your every move, automatically creating keyframes as needed. Or, if you’d prefer to be more hands-on, manually add, remove and re-arrange keyframes to fine-tune your content.” This workflow seemed too good to be true. My wife and I researched the app and to our surprise it could do so much more. I decided to buy it and make something I had been planning for years – my Guitar FROGS app.

Click below to see the whole application in wonderful frog green thanks to hype!

FROGS Hype App

Try it on your iPad!

The anatomy of Hype
Hype is unique in that it allows you to animate, link, create pages and import video – all with a few clicks and drags. You do not need to know code and it works very similarly to keynote. You get a row of slides on top with a timeline below.

Those of you who have used Flash (shudder) will welcome the easy to add keyframes or ‘record’ animation side of the timeline. No longer do you need to type in commands, this just works.
Additionally, the inspector acts like a suped-up iWork inspector. You control every aspect of your hype project from there.

Think about all of the fantastic teaching resources you could make that would be visible on the mac, pc or ios device (such as iPads).

Don’t forget to try the frogs app on your iPad and let me know what you think.
Also, if you know of any other Hype Website let me know. I would love to get some more ideas.