Adobe Flash Advanced — A 3 day course

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 Closed In-House Course

Synopsis

This Advanced Flash course will allow you to take your designer skills to the next level and certify as an Adobe Certified Associate in Flash.

Designers are often faced with the same Flash problems, this course is aimed at helping designers to structure their designs well in Flash and to integrate with ActionScript3 code written by development team members.

The course breaks down into 2 distinct sections, the first looks at advanced design and animation techniques exploring some of the latest features of Flash and design best practice, the second looks at the design and develop workflow in Flash and ActionScript3 through a series of workshop examples where design is structure to work in harmony with development.

You will also practice and take the Flash Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exam at the end of the class. Get recognised for your new skills. Get Certified.

Objectives

You will learn how to:

• Use the motion editor for animation
• Blend modes and reflections in Flash
• The basics of frame by frame and character animation
• 3D in Flash

These skills will then be built upon to explore microsite design and best practice and architecture.

The course is then rounded off with a workshop session where delegates solve common flash design dilemmas such as clickTags, preloaders and progress bars, photo galleries, presentations, carousels, mp3 players, e-books and 3D product visualisation.

Contents

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• Dimensions and file sizes
• Working our graphics before use
• The kuler extension
• Motion tweening with the motion editor and easing
• Duplicating motion to a second symbol
• Motion presets
• Mask layers and movieclips in retrospect

Introducing Interaction

• Movieclips as buttons
• Using this to create popups
• Blend modes and reflections
• Instance names
• Scaling symbols and 9-slice view
• The scroll pane and scrolling content

Adding Video

• Importing video into Flash
• Encoding using Adobe Media Encoder
• Progressive vs. Streaming
• Embedding video onto Timeline
• Streaming Services & Adobe Flash Media Server

Working with Sound

• Importing different sound formats
• Adjusting the sound parameters
• Sound compression settings
• Adding sound via the timeline
• Adding sound from the properties pane
• Controlling sound on keyframes
• Adding sound effects
• Building custom sound envelopes
• Code Snippeting AS3 to control the sound
• Understanding ActionScript terminology

Building an animation on a path

• Controlling an object to follow a custom path
• Tweaking the path with the pen tool
• Change fill to paths
• Easing in & easing out
• Building a button & making it work
• Adding buildings & trees using Art Deco Tool
• Adding sound to a button

Frame-by-Frame Animation

• Illustrator as a tool
• The import process
• Drawn and scanned content
• Import an image series
• Tracing bitmaps and optimizing curves

Character Animation and the Bones Tool

• Importing from Illustrator & MovieClips
• Using the Bones tool
• Building a basic animation
• onstraining Joints
• Defining poses
• Creating a walk-cycle

Working in 3D

• First, the limitations
• Using perspective to produce a different design
• Gradient styles
• Bitmap fills
• Blend modes to darken into the distance
• Movement in 3D and the motion editor
• Rotation in 3D and the classic problem of completion
• Publish settings and GPU acceleration
• Building & animating a 3D Cube

Working with XFL

• After Effects to Flash workflow and FLV vs. XFL
• Indesign to Flash using XFL

Getting it All Online

• Using a swf in a dreamweaver page
• Window modes and overlapping divs
• The code produced by flash and how to use it
• Understanding Flash player detection

Develop Workflow

• Planning and communication
• Convention in naming symbols
• Tnstance names
• 'Export for actionscript'

Preloader

• Movie structure
• AS3 Linkage
• The bandwidth profiler
• Adding a preloader scene
• Changing the compiler settings
• Produce a preloader animation
• Linking to our document class
• Testing the movie & simulating the download

A ProgressBar

• The progress bar plan
• Working in layers
• Instance names and registration points
• Masks can make things look great!
• Creating a ticking clock
• Using and naming our progress bar
• Linking to the class definition
• Testing the movie and simulating the download

Presentation

• Adding some animation
• Playing it through
• Simple Presentation template
• Advanced Presentation template

3D Carousel

• Building each item as a MovieClip
• Building a popup as a named instance
• Applying a background gradient
• Compile items into a Carousel Items
• Link our Carousel to the developer's code
• Testing the movie

Flash Adobe Certified Associate Exam

• Mock Exam
• Discussion on Exam Questions
• Preparation
• Practice Exam
• Flash Adobe Certified Associate Exam
• Pass or Fail

Suitable For

This course is aimed at graphic designers who have a firm understanding of the basics of Flash design having attended our Flash Introduction course or through similar industry experience and who want to take their Flash skills up to the next level working more heavily with interactive content and development workflow.

Prerequisites

Delegates should have attended the Flash Introduction course or have a similar level of industry experience before considering attending this course.