Animation/Flash

Instructor : Mél Hogan
Course: Friday evenings from 6-9pm, starting 9 March, lasting 18 hours.

For each class, we will spend the first half learning new tools and concepts, and applying them during the second half. We will discuss your goals during the first week, so if you have a specific project in mind, you should be able to work on it throughout the class, especially in the last two weeks. Do keep in mind that this is an introduction to Flash and that we will only look at action scripting in a minimal way. Starting on Week Two, feel free to bring your own images and sounds to work with. We will not be looking at video in an in-depth way for this lab, but feel free to bring video in to see how it is integrated at a basic level (a compressed QuickTime .mov file). Ideally, you should leave each lab with a published file resulting from what we've worked on in the class, but I am more than happy to adapt the class to your collective needs and skills. This is an introductory workshop so there are no prerequisite skills, but knowledge of other time-based and/or vector software is an asset.

Week One: Introduction to Tools
We will have a quick conversation about Vector graphics. We will also look at the basic tools in the Flash tool palate and explore keyframes and frames: the building blocks of animation. We will discuss participants' goals for the workshop.

Weeks Two and Three: Introduction to Animation
We will be working with type and importing photos into flash. We will begin to look at shapes and symbols (Movie Clips, Graphics) and the differences between these two elements, in relation to motion tweens and shape tweens.
* Optional: Bring a digital self-portrait for this class on USB key, CD or via email.

Week Four: Introduction to Interactivity
We will quickly look at masks and motion guides. We will also look at symbols that function as buttons and allow for interactivity, and we will introduce sound to buttons.

Weeks Five and Six: Bringing Interactivity and Animation Together