This is a diagram done in Flash and saved as a PNG file.
It shows why saving objects as a symbol allows you to
use it multiple times in a document without increasing
file size. Each object started out as a square and I changed
its shape using the tools in Flash to make the crown and the arrow.

Flash in A Flash

We are now in Module 3 and not satisfied with just the Atomic Learning movies I cast my net a little wider and found an excellent resource. This was shared by my boss, who has offered basic flash classes before and had found this resource on the Adobe site.

The series of videos is called Flash in A Flash and can be found here
http://tv.adobe.com/show/flash-in-a-flash/

The series is split into 6 episodes which are a little longer than normal for instructional videos running over 30 minutes or more in length. The presenter is John Schuman who takes an approach of not so much showing you everything you do in flash (ala Atomic Learning) but more about some of the more useful tools and techniques for getting started with Flash authoring for the web.

I watched the first episode and followed along in a separate window in Flash and was able to finally understand how to use the drawing tools in a vector program! I had tried to do this in Illustrator but never really got the hang of the bezier tool. Once explained to me and with a chance to play I now have much more confidence in using the drawing tools.

Other things I learned included saving symbols to the library and how to make an invisible button. There are still a few more videos to watch at Atomic Learning and I will watch episode two this week sometime to get more of a handle on working with objects.

Getting Started with Flash and first impressions.

This blog was started in response to the need to journal my efforts to learn Abobe Flash CS3 as a requirement for my EDTL6310 class at Bowling Green State University.

We are in Module 2 of the course and this has been a really big two weeks for me work wise. Last week I spent two days at the FreeTech Ohio conference which was held at the Kalihari Resort in Freemont Ohio and this week it was two days in Columbus for the Ohio Educational Technology Conference.

With all this time away from the office and away from home, I have found it difficult to find time to work on Flash at least as much as I had planned to in my original plan that was submitted.

Last week I got through the Basics Section (A) of videos on Atomic Learning but found that while it introduced me to the tools and controls of Flash it really did not give me the understanding to be able to create anything yet.

This week I started on section B (Basic Tool Techniques) and again while I learned some techniques there was not really enough covered to help me create something. So I decided to open up Flash and just do some experimenting based on the videos that I had seen and to try and create something.

I was able to create a 468x60 banner that could go on a website. My plan right now is to learn how to animate it and add frames to the document so that the banner will become an animated flash banner. I started with some text on a white background but you cannot see that it is a banner. It is shown below.



I added a rectangle which I created with the Rectangle Primitive Tool which I learned from AL can have rounded corners and is easy to change the stroke and fill.
We have a gold background and I dragged the text layer on top of the other one in the order (I knew how to do that in Photoshop and Flash is the same way with layers) I am guessing that like Photoshop each object that is added to the stage is on top of the existing objects.


So here we have a file that has two layers which was outputted as a PNG file.

As we go along and more is added to the project and once I have done animations I assume that it will be saved as a SWF file but all that is ahead of me yet.