COAP:COAP-2110/week1

Week 1 COAP 2110

Theme: Simple drawing and frame-by-frame animation

Elements of the Flash Desktop

• Handout: Flash CS3 desktop tutorial
• Handout: Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts

Creating simple Drawings

Topics: Stage size, Drawing modes, Selecting objects, Drawing and painting tools, Erasing and alignment, Colors, Adding text

• Handout: Flash drawing tutorial

Simple use of Layers

• Handout: Flash layers tutorial

Importing clipart and textures

• Resource: Clipart and texture

Frame-by-frame animation

• Previews: Shakin hello, Rocket
• Handout: Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial

Reading

• Chapter 1 (Getting Around Flash)
• Chapter 2 (Creating Simple Drawings)
• Chapter 5 (Only “Adding Text”, p. 169-170)
• Chapter 3 (Animating Your Drawings), only frame-by-frame animation)

Homework 1 - Week 1

Assignment

Think about a simple animation that you would like to create, e.g. something that could evolve into a comic strip, a splash page, a moving logo, an explanatory animation, etc. Then create a Flash file that includes:

• At least one frame-by-frame animation
• Some sort of background, e.g. a simple landscape.

Submission date and format

• To be returned by Monday, at start of week 2 lesson
• Use the following Flash file name familyname-firstname.fla, e.g.

miller-joe.fla

... I must be able to distinguish these files and we want to avoid overwriting.

Please upload the file to the Blackboard system (assignment 1)

Other constraints

• Reuse of objects: 1/3 must be drawn by yourself, max. 1/3 imported but customized, max. 1/3 imported as is. (So you also can do everything by yourself).
• The frame-by-frame tween must be made by yourself.
• You must fill in a document description using a template (see below)
• Homework projects are individual. If you work with others, make sure that the individual projects differ, i.e. the "reuse of objects" criteria above apply.

Evaluation criteria - bonus and malus points

See the Grading form

The document description

See the homework template. Paste your text into the Flash file documentation: Modify->Document or hit CTRL-J

Your p1-xxx-xxx.fla file must include a document description.

• Insert it with menu Modify->Document
• Enter a title and description
• You may first cut/paste the template below into a notepad and edit, then paste contents to Flash.
• Please keep the titles surrounded by "===" and use "*" for bullets as in the example that follows.

Here is an example of a filled in homework template

=== Author and Date ===
Daniel K. Schneider, sept 1 2007.

=== Objectives ===

A flying rocket that I could insert on top of a web page to give it a feel of dynamism.
It should be flaming.
 
=== Production steps (summary) ===

* Copied a rocket in SVG from the Internet
* Made a frame-by-frame animation with 4 frames
* I broke apart the rocket and changed size and shape of the flames
* Made the rocket smaller and turned it with the transform tool
* Changed background to blue
  
=== Difficulties and self-evaluation ===
 
* I didn't find this difficult.
* Please teach me how to stop the animation.
* I am quite happy with the result, but I think that the flame animation could be improved,
  i.e. the flames are hard to see in the motion animation.

=== Credits and bibliography ===

* Rocket: http://commons.uncyclomedia.org/wiki/Image:Rocket.svg
* I just used the handouts and textbook

Hints

• Go for something that is simple, e.g. animation of something with "sticks" is just fine.
• Type of background depends on your objectives, it can be just a color.
• Use this exercise to prototype some feature of your term project.
• Remember the academic honesty policy ! Homework without credits given to external resources used will be refused.