Learn Flash

I have a circus-themed poem that I want to make into a (simple! crude!) Flash animation. The other day I made little animation of a circus tent being sketched. Once the flag is drawn at the top it waves a little :)

I haven’t yet managed to use the bone tool and the motion tween to make a female contortionist contorting. But I will figure it out!

Finally making a dedicated effort to learn. So far I can add a button and create clickTag code.

Finally making a dedicated effort to learn. So far I can add a button and create clickTag code.

I knew my Flash class would be hard! And it’s an extra challenge because everyone else has years of experience with Illustrator and Photoshop, whereas I have…hours of experience of messing around with those programs.

A couple of times I fell behind, and because I didn’t want to hold up the class, I just watched what the instructor was doing. This turned out to be a terrible strategy, because he would figure out I didn’t have the right thing on my screen and stop everything to get me back up to speed.

So now I know to just go ahead and yell out, “Wait, that didn’t work,” or whatever, because it saves more time in the end.

Most of the time I’m right with everyone else, and I feel like I really am learning a lot in a short amount of time. It’s a very complex program, and it will take me SO much practice to really be able to do cool things with it! But I’m going to get it loaded onto my work computer so I can work on it.

I got a year subscription to lynda.com and have been watching flash video tutorials for the past week! I am on my way to reach my goal of designing flash websites!

All Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at work. So excited!

To learn flash there are a number of areas you’ll need delve into. Navigating the interface, basic animation tweening, and finally actionscripting. This is not for the faint of heart. If you know javascript you’ll have a big head start. I think Adobe has tried to make a larger job market out of flash by separating flash expertise into two main areas: design and programming. You can do some great things in flash and not be a programmer by utilizing pre-built or bought extensions. Programmers can do the reverse by purchasing pre-designed templates and assets. A little bit of knowledge can go a long way with this application.

i want learn …........flash….....

In January I started a course on webdesign for beginners and Flash is a part of it. Because it’s for beginners, we’re not learning everything there is to know, but it’s a start. The course finishes in May and then we have to show a working website with HTML, CSS, Photoshop and Flash elements working. After the course I’m planning to do a lot of tutorials and maybe follow the expert course. Problem is that the course is rather expensive, but…I must admit: when you’re in a course you learn a lot more and faster [at least in my case I am ;-)] For now: doing homnework!

Wanna start up a webdesign company and yet I have little to no knowledge of flash, beyond simple things like rollovers and that. COnsider this on my to-do list.