Learning Flash With Author/Computer Illustrator,
Bill Dallas Lewis
Flash Tutorials, On Line Flash Tutor, Learning Flash Online, Bill Dallas Lewis, Silly Billy's World.
Hello, I'm Bill Dallas Lewis. I love computer Graphics and I love Flash. I have been writing for children, and teaching adults for 15 years. I'm a Dartmouth Grad, with a Masters from the Ohio State University. I have three children's books in print, and I've done work for Scholastic Books that still is printed in a text book for second graders used internationally. Over 600 Schools have invited me in to show there teachers and students how to create on the computer.
After teaching computer graphics in the USA, Italy, England, Germany and Turkey, I decided to move to the heart of computer graphics to learn all that I could. That place would be Silicon Valley, California. I've been here for many years now. I've learned a ton teaching adults from major corporations how to use Flash, PhotoShop, Illustrator, html, xhtml, css, Actionscript, Fireworks, Digital Video, Digital Imaging and more.
Adults from Wells Fargo, The Gap, the Federal Reserve, Old Navy, Bank of America, MacroMedia, Visa, Oracle and other firms, have learned many things from me.
So, those are my two worlds. Learning Flash for me was complex. I want to make it easier for you. Below you will find an overview of Flash. You should read this before you go into the following segments. But as you read the overview, please remember that, "It's just an overview." We will go more in depth into all topics and concepts as we move ahead.
What is Flash?
You can create just about anything in Macromedia’s Flash. Most people
think of Flash as a software program to develop web sites. Sure, that’s
one thing you can do with Flash. You can also create games, e-learning environments,
you can burn your presentations to CD or DVD for professional looking, self
contained, self executing files. This means that you can create interactive
environments, burn them to CD or DVD and your target viewers would only
need to double click an icon, and the presentation will launch itself.
Flash can do wonders with Data exchange, or, you can use the Flash Communication Server to communicate with people on other continents, or across the country just like the George and Judy did in the Jetsons. You see them, they see you, you have live messaging and shared white boards for sharing visual documents. And that is just two people communicating. You can take that to the next step. With Flash Communication Server, you can have 2500 people online at the same time.
Flash is awesome. With Flash, you can make anything happen.
Maybe You Should Stick with Power Point or Dream Weaver?
Flash is Not Easy.
Flash has a steep learning curve. I'm not saying you can't learn it. You? You are brilliant. You'll do just fine. But, let me see if I can explain this. For almost everything you do in Flash, there a four or more steps you have to take to get it done. If you miss one step, that one thing you are trying to do doesn't work.
Learning Flash is like learning a new dance step. But instead of one dance step, you have to learn about 200. You miss a step and that portion of your project doesn't work. Also, If you don't practice each and every dance step on a regular basis, then you forget the steps. If you don't use it, you lose it.
It may be that your presentation is simple enough to get done in Power Point. Or, if your web page is mostly text with a couple of images, then maybe would could just do that with Dream Weaver or Front Page.
Look at this page you're reading now. I could have done it in Flash, but it's mostly text. As we go further into these materials, I'll use Flash when appropriate. Using Flash is like being a black belt. You don't use it all of the time for everything. You use it when it's appropriate.
Coding
Flash operates using a code called Actionscript. With the introduction of Flash 2004, Macromedia introduces Actionscript version 2. Version 2 of Actionscript is almost just like Java Script. It is in the same code category set by the World Wide Web Consortium designated as ECMA 262.
Then,,,,,,,,they came out with Actionscript 3,,,,,that's a whole different story.
Sounds complicated doesn’t it. Well, you can live your Flash life and never use much Actionscript at all. Or, the Actionscript that you do use can be very simple and extremely easy to understand. But, once you start having fun with Flash, and after you start seeing Flash documents on the net, you are going to ask yourself, “How did they do that?” Then, you will want to know more and more about this wonderful, challenging code.
Code is art. If you don’t understand variables, methods, properties and other scary terms like that, you may say, “Oh no, I be scared. I’m not a coder.” But Code is art, and if you give yourself a chance, you will have lots of fun with Actionscript.
So you be the judge. To code, or not to code. Either way, Flash is effective and tons of fun.
Who should use Flash?
We live in a multimedia world. We love to hear sounds, see things move, drag objects around our computer screens, and when this thingy hits that thingy, something happens. We like that. It’s called interactivity and it works.
I've taught Flash to executives at Major Corporations who are interested in creating their web sites for PDA’s. I’ve taught Flash to kindergarteners. They all had fun and made presentations that were effective.
Everyone should use Flash. Except, people with no imaginations. In the Flash Software, there is no Imagination Panel. If you have no imagination, stick with Microsoft products.
Flash examples
Here are a couple of websites you might visit to see what Flash can do.
eye4u.com
2advanced.com
coolhomepages.com
jibjab.com
egomedia.com
sillybilly.com
pedestriandesign.com
Go to these pages and click around and see what happens.
Flash resources
Flash can be simple. Flash can be complex. You are not going to learn everything about Flash by taking a 4 day seminar. That ain’t going to happen. This online course will teach you a ton. But more so, this course will show you what you need to learn to go further. YOU WILL NEED SOME RESOURES.
My suggestion is to visit the website coolhomepages.com. They rank the top 100 websites on the internet in different categories. One category is Flash. If you click on the Flash section, you will find 100’s of web sites done in Flash. My suggestion is to click around and see what you like and what you don’t like. Ask yourself how they are doing what you like. Then evaluate if you understand how to do what they are doing. Most of the time, you will need a book to help you simulate someone else’s methods.
My Book Suggestions
Buy the Flash 2004 Bible. This is a 1200 page book with a wonderful index and a CD filled with samples. They will walk you through each example step by step. Also get the Flash 2004 Actionscript Bible. On the lighter side, believe it or not, get Flash for Dummies. Yes, it sounds stupid, but it is a really good book, and it gets you through all of the Flash menus and basics. If you have used Flash 5, then Flash MX, you may want to buy the Dummies book just to show you what is new in Flash 2004.
Web Site Learning.
Here are some web sites that I visit to learn Flash tips and tricks
flashkit.com
kirupa.com
flashmagazine.com
actionscripts.org
Believe it or not, start with these and you’ll learn a lot.
Planning Your Flash Project
Planning? What a drag. We see all of the cool Flash stuff on the net, we just bought the software, and now we want to sit down and make a web site. And we want to be done by noon. I DON’T THINK SO.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to plan out what you want to happen in your Flash. Hey! Stop that! I see you getting ready to skip this section. DON’T DO IT!
I’m just like you, I want to skip the planning stage also, but after my 15 years of graphics development in print, video and interactive software, I’ve learned that the planning stage is the most important. Let’s discuss some scary basics about Flash.
Flash is an Object Oriented Program, based upon events, and event handlers. Oh My! That sounds scary. We’ll talk about object oriented programming latter. But for now, we can talk about the easy part, events and event handlers.
You are making a presentation, an animation, or a web site. You want people to see something, or some things and you want them to be able to do things, then things happen. People will see something, click on it to go some where, or drag it some where, or type information into little boxes.
When people click something, this is called an Event. And when that click takes place, you need something to handle that event. Think of this, on click, go to a web site. The click is the event, and on click, the handler is ,”get url.”
You should sit down with a pad and paper, figure out what text people will see on your site, what pictures they will see, and consider options you will offer them for when they hover over your buttons, click your buttons and images, and maybe drag things (things are called objects) around the screen.
And, when they click here, they go there. Once they get there ( a new page maybe) they click here to go there.
You need a Storyboard, a plan. Sit down with a piece of paper and map all of this out. When you are done, c collect your information. Gather your images, sounds, and video clips, then sit down with Flash and make it happen.
For you images, create them, edit them and resize them all in Fireworks or PhotoShop before you bring them into the Flash software.
If you do these things, your life will be a lot easier.
Now let’s go into Flash.
The Big Hotel, Rooms in Rooms in Rooms.
IntroDuctions to Symbols.
Yeap! The Flash work environment is like a big hotel. You have the lobby and many different rooms where many different things are going on. When you launch Flash, you see a big white rectangle on your monitor, and this thing is called, “The Stage.” Think of the stage as the stage you saw in you high school. This is where the presentation is made to the audience.
Think of a play. Anything off the stage, behind the curtains, the audience can’t see. So if a character walks from behind the curtains, you can see them. If they sing and dance, and then walk off the stage, you can’t see them anymore. This is the same way the stage works in Flash.
Think of your high school planning the play of the year. If the play is going to happen in April, then your high school announces in October that you should sign up if you want to be involved, or try out for parts in the play. Think of that. The process starts months in advance. Once the announce is made and people sign up to do various things for the play, then everybody starts practicing and preparing.
In your high school, to prepare for the play, you have the art room, the music room, the acting room, the marketing room, and many more rooms where things are taking place before we get to the stage in April.
In Flash, instead of calling these areas rooms, we call them “EDITING AREAS.” In one room we create the costume for the main character. In another room we create the costume for the bad guy, in another room we create the costume for the hero of the play. Once all of these costumes are created in the rooms called editing areas, we store them in a magical place called the “Library.” When we want to use them, we drag them to the stage and make them come to life.
Now, you most likely have seen “Lord of the Rings, Part III.” If you haven’t here’s what happens. You have 50 gazillion bad guys (that means so many that you can’t count them) coming from everywhere trying to eliminate the good guys. All of the bad guys have on the same outfit and, believe it or not, all of the bad guys look alike. Imagine all of those editing areas.
This is a very serious concept in Flash. Memory usage for your final product and library use. Each bad guy would be created in an editing area. Each bad guy’s costume would be made in an editing area. If we had 50 gazillion bad guys and costumes, this would take up a lot of memory, increasing file size so much, that we could put it on the internet. So here’s what we do to keep file size down.
We make one bad guy in one editing area. We go into another editing area and make a costume. Then we go back into the editing area of our bad guy. While we are in there, we drag the costume out of the other editing area and put it on our bad guy. Then we go to the stage where the battle takes place. Once on the stage, we drag our bad guy with costume, out of the library again, and again and again, until we have 50 gazillion bad guys on the stage. We can resize them, flip them horizontal , rotate each one, so that they all look like they are different from one another.
Key Concept,,,,,, ”Instantiation.”
For every bad guy we drag to the stage, this is called an “instance” of the original bad guy. Because all of these bad guys come from one editing area, The Flash God ( I made this term up) thinks that we are using one bad guy, and it keeps our file size down.
In real life in Flash,,,,we would call the bad guy from the library a Symbol. I didn’t make this word up, Macromedia did. When you drag a symbol to the stage, that symbol becomes an instance of the symbol. You can drag 100 instances of one symbol to the stage and the Flash God thinks that you have only used one. This keeps file size down, and has other wonderful benefits also. You’ll see.
Symbols and the Library in Flash
There are three types of symbols in Flash.
Let’s get this out of the way right now. What goes into the Flash Library and how does it get there? The Library is a panel in Flash. To find it you go Window>Library. Do it! Doesn’t it look nice? Any time you import an image, a sound, or a video clip, it automatically goes into the library, then you can use it as many time as you would want.
Whenever you make a symbol, it is stored in the library.
Three ways to make a symbol. If you make a costume for a bad guy. Let’s say you draw the thing on the stage, you would select it and use the command Modify>Convert to Symbol.
Or, you could go Insert>New Symbol.
Or, if you draw the bad guy’s outfit on the stage, you could select
it and drag it into the library panel. Anyway you do it , the same goal
is accomplished, you’ve made a symbol.
Now, if you do this, the Flash God is going to ask you some questions when you make a symbol. The Flash God is going to ask, “Dude! What kind of symbol do you want this to be?”
There are three types of symbols in Flash;
| GraphicSymbols MovieClip Symbols Button Symbols |
When ever give a symbol a name, I use the following ways to name them. If I make the image of a dog a symbol, I would name it like this;
| g_dog (graphic symbol) mc_dog(movie clip symbol) b_dog(button symbol) |
If you name all of your symbols like this, they all show up in your library in a nicely organized fashion. I wish that I had always done this, because when I revisit projects of old, it helps me find my symbols more easily. Believe me, you will go back to old projects for many different reasons.
You may be asking, “So what is the difference between the three different types of Symbols?”
Well, that’s none of your business. Alright, this answer could be complicated but I’m going to simplify it and I’ll expand upon this explanation as we go on.
Graphic symbols.
If I’m going to tween an object, I’ll make it a graphic symbol. If I’m going to use an object (when I say object , I mean something I drew or an image that I’ve imported) many different times in this project, and in projects to come, I’ll make it a graphic symbol.
Movie Clip Symbols.
If I want to talk to an object in code, then I’ll make it a movie
clip symbol. You may say, “What the heck to you mean, talk to an
object in code?” Well, I mean that if I have a cat with a tail,
and when I click a button, then I want the tail to wag, I would make
the cat a movie clip symbol, because, unique to the Movie Clip symbol,
we can give it a name. We can’t do that with a Graphic symbol.
The Flash God doesn’t let you give Graphic Symbols names.
With code I can say, “if they click this button, make the cat’s
tail wag.”
Button Symbols
If I want people to be able to click on my object and make something happen, the I make it a button symbol. Something like this. When they click my button, go to CNN’s web site.
These are very basic examples. We will use all of these symbols for many different things. The Flash Bible has about 500 pages on how to use symbols. Buy the book.
Now,,,,THIS IS AN OVERVIEW,,,,an introduction to the magical land of Flash. We will get more detailed with lot’s of examples and samples and more references to the Flash God. So kick back, suck up the information, and now, let’s go into Flash.