Gatlin International

Description

Our Flash training course is designed to provide you with the basic knowledge and skills you need to get started creating stunning effects, animations and interactive applications.

Adobe Flash is the application of choice for many professional animators. Flash is a vector-based tool, which has taken over the Web. With it, you can create everything from simple animations to entire web sites.

In this 6-lesson Flash training course, you'll develop a solid understanding of the basic drawing and animating tools in Flash. You'll alos learn to master critical elements including layers, symbols, and tweens.

Course assignments include creating an animated logo, a banner ad, a cityscape, a splash screen, a basic Flash site interface, and much, much more.

You'll also save money and have the added convenience of being able to learn online, at your own pace.

Learning Flash has never been easier or more affordable than with the Flash training course from Gatlin International.

Outline

LESSON 1 Creating Graphics

All of the amazing animations and interactive features you create in this course begin with the basics: creating vector art in Flash. The first lesson introduces you to Flash's vector drawing tools, methods of coloring and modifying your drawings, and importing bitmap photos into the Flash environment. You'll also learn how Flash symbols and layers make your artwork easy to edit. Your first exercise will challenge you to design a character and background for a social game.

LESSON 2 Animation with Motion Tweening

This is where things really get moving. Lesson Two introduces motion tweening, the process of animating changes in the appearance and location of an object. You'll learn basic animations, animations on custom motion paths, and even nested animations that add complexity to your designs. You'll animate text as well with a 3D spin. In the exercise, you'll try your hand at an animated banner ad that incorporates the techniques you learned.

LESSON 3 Special Animation Techniques

Motion tweening is just one method of animating in Flash. This lesson addresses additional techniques that allow you to add even more interest to your designs. You'll learn how to morph shapes into one another with shape tweening and you'll learn how to animate jointed objects (like characters) using inverse kinematics and the Bone tool. You will also learn to create still and animated masks that highlight areas of your Flash movies. Exercise Three enables you to bring a character to life with inverse kinematics and an action cycle.

LESSON 4

Interactivity engages viewers by allowing them to contribute to the action. This can be as simple as navigation buttons, which are your first topic in Lesson Four. You'll learn how to create the four button states in Flash and how to modify them for visual and audio feedback. Then you'll take your first foray into ActionScript 3.0 with some basic coding that controls the buttons and Timeline. In the exercise, you'll put buttons and ActionScript to work to create an image gallery for a professional photographer.

LESSON 5 Integrating Video

Flash video players are found all over the Web, and this lesson explores how to create them starting with basic editing in Adobe Media Encoder. You'll learn how to output to the FLV and F4V formats, embed and load video in Flash, and choose video player skins. You will also use ActionScript to control Flash's video component so users can choose which videos to view. You'll show off this skill in the exercise where you'll create an extreme sports video jukebox.

LESSON 6 Modularity and Hyperlinks

The final lesson pulls everything you've learned together to explore processes for keeping your Flash movies manageable and taking them online.  Modularity is explored, including ActionScript means for loading external content, as a way to organize your work and make it easy to edit independent pieces.  You will also learn how to create hyperlinks to Internet content and to prep your files for publishing to the Web.

Additional Info

Languages

English

Course Length

60.00 hours

Duration of Access

Enrolled students have access to the class for six months. During this period, questions or assignments may be submitted at any time to the instructor. Each course lesson requires an average of 10 hours of study time.

Instructor

Boris Margolin is a graphic designer with 10 years of experience. Boris has worked as an in-house designer for several major international corporations including CIGNA, MetLife, and Nypro. While living in New Zealand Boris worked at a brand development studio and at Victoria University. His design work has ranged from advertising design, to identity design, brand development, Web design and administration to Flash application development. In his spare time Boris runs his own niche design company catering to unconventional companies and emerging markets. Boris earned a BS in Graphic Design at Mount Ida College in Massachussetts.

Prerequisites/Audience

The Flash training course is designed for adult learners interested in building skills and portfolio for a design career. To take the course, students simply require a computer (PC or Mac), an Internet connection (56 Kbps modem or faster), and any required software. For courses with software requirements, computers must meet software manufacturers' system requirements.

Requirements/Materials Included

To take this course you'll need Adobe Flash CS4 or CS5 and Adobe Photoshop or equivalent digital imaging program.

Certification

3 CEU's

Sessions College is accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). Certificate programs are accredited by the Middle States Commission on Secondary Schools.