Flash!Macromedia Flash is the key to designing and delivering low-bandwidth animations, presentations, and Web sites. It offers scripting capabilities and server-side connectivity for creating engaging applications, Web interfaces, and training courses. Once you've created your content, 98.3% of the online audience will be able to view it with the Macromedia Flash Player.

Drawing and Painting Tools! Flashes features are

familiar to those of Illustrator and Photoshop.

Flash is a Vector based program with a loose sense of drawing. Normally there is not an Eraser, and a Lasso tool in a vector program.

Each tool has its own modifier. They are shown in the bottom of the tool bar.

Illustrator? If your more comfortable drawing in Illustrator you can draw there and bring those drawings into Flash to be animated!

Some features like custom fills and arrow heads will not be interpreted correctly.

Open Illustrator file, then select the portion you want to take into Flash.

Go to EDITCOPY

Switch over to Flash

Go EDIT PASTE

Re-layer everything, and your ready to begin making symbols!

Tool Modifiers For each tool there are Modifiers.

Each one of these adjusts the properties of the tool. Demo!!

Drawing with Flash Open file:

CE General Flash-Tutorials (copy entire folder to your desktop) and open : 02 Drawing or open the Drawing lesson included with Flash

You try Flash, then I tell more

Open your story board

Select the first cell and select everything inside the cell.

EDITCOPY

Open Flash EDITPASTE Now we are going to group and turn things into symbols.

SAVE it! Hmm, what's a symbol?

Symbols In Flash, a symbol

represents a movie clip, button or graphic that you have created. Symbols make it easier to use the same object over and over again without having to re-create it, which is a waste of time. In this section, we will learn how to create, modify and remove symbols you have created. We will also learn how to add effects to these symbols, enhancing your movie.

Converting to Symbols: In the stage area, draw

a graphic of your choice, using any tool and colors of your choice. Once you have a new shape on your stage, select it. Your drawing is now selected, from the menu, go to "Insert> Convert to Symbols". A window will appear in the middle of your screen called "Symbol Properties". Choose the graphic option, then name your symbol "my drawing".

Use this instruction to your left to define portions of your image. For example The head to a character could be one symbol and the body another.

Symbols can be used over and over without making file size larger. They only instances of vector drawings. MeaningYou could have 50 or 1 of your drawing and the file size will never grow larger.

Converting to symbols Insert Convert to Symbols Get this

dialogue box Choose one of the following Movie Clip (nested

animations-complex interactivity) Button (used for rollovers) Graphic (default Needs timeline space to cover

activity-whereas movie clips can run in one cell)

Library: Flash takes it upon

itself to add all your graphics and buttons to a small database called the Library. This is where flash allows you to view, edit and remove items you have created. To view the Library, hit CTRL+L and it will show up. (Shown in figure 2.1)

Symbol DemoOpen 03 symbols from the lessons folder you downloaded.

Begin the lesson and think about your own animation while practicing.

Converting your stuff to symbols and

creating layers. Lab time to get everything in order to begin animating!

Convert everything to a symbol, and begin to think about your layers as you would in Photoshop or Illustrator.

Animation

Animation DemoOpen file: 08 Animation and follow the exercise.

After this you will be able to take what we have done and begin to move the objects (now symbols around)

KeyframesA set of parameters defining a point in a transition,

eg of a DVE effect. For example a keyframe may define a picture size, position and rotation. Any digital effect must have a minimum of two keyframes, start and finish, although more complex moves will use more - maybe as many as 100. Increasingly, more parameters are becoming 'keyframeable', ie they can be programmed to transition between two, or more, states. Examples are colour correction to made a steady change of colour, and keyer settings, perhaps to made an object slowly appear or disappear.

  Any frame in which a particular aspect of an item

(its size, location, color, etc.) is specifically defined. The non-keyframe frames will then contain interpolated values.

Some animation for starters

1. http://www.scripting.com/hyakugojyuuichi/ 2. http://text.jodi.org/3. http://www.threebrain.com/weeeeee.html4. http://muffinfilms.com/5. http://www.sodaplay.com/constructor/6. http://www.starterupsteve.com/swf/

Group_X_video.html7. http://www.learnthat.com/courses/viewlets/

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