Learn Macromedia's
Flash Basics

This class is a featured hot design topic:
Avoiding Sloppy Shape Tweens

Tammy Gilbertson, California "It was fun to draw with the tools. Hardest part was deciding what to draw! I like the ease of dragging corners to make new shapes."

When Web designers think dynamic, they think Macromedia Flash. The vector-based tool, rapidly taking over the Web, can create everything from simple animations to entire sites.

In this 6-lesson course, you'll develop a deep understanding for basic drawing and animating tools in Flash, mastering such critical interface elements as layers, scenes, nested symbols, and movie clips. You'll create an animated logo, a cityscape, a splash screen, a basic Flash site interface, and more.

You'll be introducing yourself as a "Flashster of the Universe" in no time!

Faculty:

Instructor:
Alex Sherwin is an interactive designer and animator...get bio

Instructor/Course Developer:
David Witt is a San Fransisco based new media artist and multimedia designer... get bio

Create objects in the Flash environment using drawing tools, and select and modify those objects with selection tools, fills and strokes, and other features.

Use layers and symbols to organize and reuse Flash objects, and creating and editing symbol instances to produce complex artwork.

Use frames, keyframes, and the Flash timeline to prepare objects for animation.

Apply motion tweens to animate objects over distances, and apply shape tweens to morph objects from one shape to another.

Create Web-optimized Flash movies utilizing symbols and other file size-saving features.

Apply special animation effects using masks, imported and bitmapped images, and combined tweens.

Develop an animated splash page that includes basic ActionScript playback commands.

Import audio clips to provide a background soundtrack and trigger sound effects at specific times in the movie.

Link to other Web sites and load other Flash movies using ActionScript code.

Develop a Flash-based Web site with working navigation buttons, graphic content areas, an email link, and other special features.

Outline:

LESSON 1 Intro to Flash Lesson One gives you an essential orientation to Flash. You'll view interactive case studies to learn what it's used for (and why) and learn about its strengths as an animation tool. After a tour of the Flash interface, you'll dive into a hands-on exploration of Flash drawing tools. As you'll discover, Flash can be a one-stop shop for drawing, a flexible environment for creating lines and fills, grouping elements, smoothing curves, and aligning objects.

LESSON 2 Symbols and Layers Using symbols -- reusable images, buttons, or animations -- can speed the creation of your artwork, making it easier for you to focus on the bigger picture. Lesson Two explores the basics of manipulating art in a Flash movie. You'll look at how to create a layer and edit symbol properties, exploring how any component of a graphic can be turned into a movie clip. You'll cover how to use symbols as instances throughout your movie, without increasing file size, and how to put effects on an instance.

LESSON 3 Frames and Animation Animation is what Flash was designed for. Lesson Three digs into the nuts and bolts of making things move in Flash. You'll look at motion tweening, the process of moving graphics around the movie stage, shape tweening, the technique of morphing one shape into another, and cell animation, the traditional, frame-by-frame approach. You'll learn fast, efficient ways of accomplishing these results in Flash, as well as the finer points of controlling speed and duration and avoiding sloppy transitions.

LESSON 4 Bells and Whistles As a Flash developer, bells and whistles can be your bread and butter. Lesson Four explores some techniques for adding sophistication to your Flash work. Masks and transparency are discussed as means of creating layer effects. Best practices for importing bitmapped images into Flash are covered, in addition to tweening along a motion path and the art of combining motion and shape tweens.

LESSON 5 Making a Splash Lesson Five examines concepts and techniques for one of Flash's most common applications: the splash screen. Through a real-life case study, the design objectives of the splash screen—and its technological constraints—are explored in detail. Themes covered include: how to establish an identity, grab the viewer's attention, limit download time, and manage file size. You'll also break down the movie frame-by-frame to discover the designer's solution to animation challenges.

LESSON 6 Interactive Adventures Lesson Six offers an entree into the world of interactivity. You'll discover how to add sound to your movies and create buttons, both key components of time-based animations. Different button states are discussed, so you can make the most of Flash's built-in behaviors and avoid common button bloopers. You'll get a taste of the exciting world of action scripting, then learn about linking within Flash, the basis for adding all these groovy features to your Web site.

Tuition: $803 US