Course Dates
- Monday 9th - 11th August 2010 \ 3 places book now
Adobe Flash is a professional rich media design tool used to produce animation, advertisements, and various other web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and to develop rich Internet applications. The Adobe Flash software is designed to work closely with other Adobe Creative Suite packages such as Illustrator and PhotoShop to allow you to quickly and easily import and manipulate animations and graphics.
This course introduces how to create Flash projects ranging from simple banner animations through to complete Flash based website interfaces. It starts with the basics of the Flash interface and tools and steadily moves on to the more complex features such as masking and blending and managing tweened animation. The course also places a heavy emphasis on the new features provided in Flash such as Inverse Kinetics and 3D object manipulation.
Course Requirements
To attend this Introduction to Adobe Flash training course you should have experience using either the Windows or Mac interface and be capable of basic file management. No previous web design software skills or experience is required, but actively working online is always beneficial.
Course Description
The courses starts with an overview of the new look Adobe Flash interface and the ability to quickly and easily switch and customise workspaces on the fly. Configuring and setting up Flash to best suit your workflow can help you to work much more efficiently. The course then looks at the various input and output file types supported in Flash and how these can be used when working with other applications. There is an overview of the built in help and tutorial system and the fantastic support provided by the Adobe Exchange for Flash.
The selection tool is actually one of the most important tools within Flash, so this is covered with in detail, with a look at how it interacts and affects the timeline, drawing, painting and shape tools. The new Deco and Symmetry tools allow some new and interesting animated effects to be created while Adobe’s colour tool called Kuler is now integrated as part of the Flash CS4 interface, which can provide inspiration when creating custom colour swatches and gradients. With the introduction of layers, the functionality is extended with layer masking and the ability to work with multiple drawing planes.
The course introduces the concept of symbols in Flash which are used as the primary object containers for animation and ActionScript reference. With these properly organised in the library they provide a method of reusing assets with minimal overhead. A detailed breakdown is given on the differences and uses of graphic and movieclip symbols while there is a brief look at button symbols at this point to set the scene for a more detailed look later on in the course.
One of the new changes in Flash was the inclusion of the object based tweening system. Although there is still support for the old shape and motion (now called classic) tweens, the new object based motion tweening provides an effective upgrade to the old key frame system of animation from previous versions of Flash. The course focuses on this new method and benefits gained from the flexible new motion editor interface. With this and the built in motion presets, Flash significantly boosts productivity when creating all types of animations. Of course, all the traditional methods of key frame based animation are covered as well.
With the tools in Flash being primarily vector based, there is also good look at importing and working with bitmap graphics. Although a lot of bitmap work will be done in packages such as Adobe’s Photoshop, there is also support within Flash for the optimisation and conversion of bitmap graphics to vectors if needed.
The major draw of Flash is the new 3D workspace tools and inverse kinetics (bone) tools. The course will take a detailed look at the use of these two new tools and see why Flash designers are so excited about the possibilities of what can be done with them. The 3D tool literally adds another dimension to what can be easily created within Flash, while the bone tool allows anyone to build and animate life like characters with minimal effort.
The course then looks at creating both rollover and animated buttons for Flash interactivity use. This is handles through button symbols which behave slightly different from the previously mentioned graphic and movieclip symbols. Actionscript then follows with a look at both version 2 and the new version 3. Since this is an introductory level course, the basics are covered with some code demonstrated on how to control the playhead through Actionscript and how to link to external web pages or files.
The encoding and embedding of video and audio within Flash presentations is then covered. Students will be able to build their own customised video players which will allow video to be streamed via the web or from dvd. Finally, there is an in depth look at the options for publishing Flash content to both the web and onto media such as CD or DVD.
Course Trainer
Bjorn is an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Flash CS4, the industry recognised certification for Adobe products.
He has been involved in working with and training Flash since version 4 when it was owned by Macromedia and used primarily as an animation tool. He has a wealth of experience developing Flash based advertising materials, elearning resources and interactive applications.
Coupled with nearly ten years of training Flash he is able to answer virtually any question you may have about the product. Having insights into both the design and development worlds, he is able to understand the capabilities of design packages such as Illustrator, Flash and Photoshop as well as develop with server side platforms such as PHP.
Course Location
This course is run from our rooms in Nottingham's prestigious Lace Market area which is a part of the city's main commercial district. This is serviced by a state-of-the-art tram system allowing easy access to the city centre as well as direct hourly rail services from London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Derby and Leicester.
Course Details
- Course Duration :
3 days | 9.30am - 5pm - Course Location :
Lace Market, Nottingham, UK - Course Price :
£395 - Software Version :
Flash CS4
Course Overview
The course covers the following areas :
- The Flash Interface
- Setting Default Workspaces
- Working with Panels
- Flash Preferences
- Flash file types
- Getting Help within Flash
- Document Properties
- Drawing and Colour
- The Selection Tool
- Drawing & Painting Tools
- The Shape Tools
- The Deco Tool
- The Symmetry Brush
- Transforming Gradients
- Custom Colour Palettes / Swatches
- Align Panel
- Using Kuler
- Working with Layers
- Layer Masking
- Symbols and Instances
- Creating Symbols
- Organising the Library
- Graphic & MovieClip Symbols
- Button Symbols
- Motion Tweening
- Shape & Classic Tweens
- Motion Tweens
- Object Based Animation
- Working with Motion Paths
- The Motion Editor
- Animation Easing
- Motion Presets
- Working with Bitmaps
- Importing Images
- Importing and editing sequences
- Tracing Bitmap Images
- Compressing Bitmaps
- 3D Animation
- Setting 3D translation
- Rotating in 3D
- 3D Animation Paths
- Transforming 3D Paths
- Inverse Kinetics
- The Bone Tool
- Creating & Animating Bones
- The Bind Tool
- Author and Runtime Kinetics
- Filters & Blend Modes
- Applying Blends
- Applying Filters
- Saving Preset Filters
- Animating Filters
- Using Text in Flash
- Static, Dynamic & Input text
- Text Anti-aliasing
- Accessibility
- Button Symbols
- Creating Buttons
- Up, Over, Down & Hit states
- Using Invisible Buttons
- Creating Animated Buttons
- Working with Scenes
- Adding Scenes
- Navigating scenes
- ActionScript Basics
- ActionScript 2 vs ActionScript 3
- The Actions Panel
- Stopping the Playhead
- Creating a Link
- Controlling the playhead
- Video and Audio
- Flash Media Encoder
- Creating custom video players
- Adding Sound Effects
- Publishing Flash
- Publish Settings
- Publishing Flash for the Web
- Importing Flash in Dreamweaver
- Publishing Flash for CD / DVD
- Publishing Flash for video