Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

•2 Approaches to Flash:

•Designer/Animator - use traditional ‘cel’ animation techniques

•Developer/Programmer - write robust applications using ActionScript

Stuff to Cover• Timeline

• Keyframes

• Tweening - Motion Tween vs. Shape Tween

• Tools

• Library

• Symbols - Graphic, Movie Clip and Button

• Importing assets

• ActionScript Panel

• Script Assist vs. Expert Mode

• Publishing Your Movie

• .swf + .html

The Stage

All the action happens here. For the most part, anything that’s on the Stage will appear in your final animation.

The Timeline

A visual representation of your movie over time. Each dot (Keyframe) represents what your movie looks like at that moment in time.

The Timeline

Shape Tweens:

Organic movement. Allows blends between two vector shapes. Cannot use symbols.

Tweens: Shape vs. Motion

Motion Tweens:

Not organic. Must use Symbols. Only one Symbol per layer, or the Tween will fail.

The LibraryYour repository of assets.

Some good things to know about Flash:

any Library item can be used an unlimited amount of times in your movie without impacting file-size.

each “instance” of a symbol can have its properties (size, color, alpha, rotation, etc.) modified on the Stage without affecting the original Library item.

The LibraryGraphic:

•have a timeline that is synchronized with the main movie timeline

•you can set looping or set them to only play a certain range of frames

•you can interactively see the animation

The LibraryButton:

•does exactly what you would think it would

•have their own special timeline

•can attach ActionScript directly to an instance of a Button Symbol

The LibraryMovieClip:

•the Most Awesome Symbol - like Peter from Heroes

•can target it and tell it to do stuff from ActionScript

•it’s timeline is independent of the main timeline

•can dynamically position MovieClips on the Stage

ActionScriptLike Java or other ECMA-Script compliant languages. *

Provides a rich set of commands for controlling your movie and providing interactivity.

Case-sensitive.

*(I don’t know what ECMA-Script means.)

PublishingYou can publish in various formats.

To get your movie on the web, you need at least the .swf format and an html page to embed it into.

You can write your own html, but you need to embed the swf correctly in it.

Proper Flash detection is also a consideration.

(In the end, it’s probably just easier to let Flash handle it.)