COAP:COAP-2110
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Introduction
This is a revised sample template for a introductory Flash course. It is based on my Webanimation (Flash) COAP 2110 courses at Webster University, Geneva. The actual syllabi were different.
- Course level learning outcomes (roughly)
- Know the organization and tools of the Macromedia CS3 Flash Desktop
- Create simple drawings
- Manipulation of graphics (e.g. envelope transforms, color gradients)
- Creating and using layers
- Frame-by-frame, motion and shape animations
- Use of embedded movie clips
- Incorporating non-Flash media files (graphics, sound and video)
- Simple interactivity in Flash, e.g. use of buttons, button components and some action script
- Teaching materials
- Flash tutorials in this wiki (lecture notes)
- Veer, E.A. Vander and Chris Grover (2007). Flash CS3: The Missing Manual. ISBN 0596510446 - 527 pages.
- O'Reilly page for the book
- Missing CD-ROM, materials used in the book.
- Flash Tutorials on the Internet
- Reference and overviews
- Flash tutorials (a list of Flash tutorials in this wiki, not all are used here)
- Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts
- Flash formats and objects overview
Program
We shall introduce 1-2 new topics per week. For the first 6 weeks we will assign mini-projects that will help you to learn the most important techniques.
Week 1
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
- Frame-by-frame animation
- Previews: Shakin hello, Rocket
- Handout: Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial
Week 2
Theme: Motion animation and embedded movie clips
- Introduction to motion animation
- Previews: Moving cat, Moving, changing cat,
- Handout: Flash motion tweening tutorial
- Summary: Flash animation summary (optional)
- Symbols and embedded movie clips
- Previews: Flying Rocket
- Handout: Flash embedded movie clip tutorial (only the first 4 sections, i.e. skip the ActionScript parts)
Week 3
Theme: Transformation of graphics and morphing
- Layers (again)
- Topics: Being organized
- Handout: Flash layers tutorial
- Transformation of objects
- Topics: Simple transformation (scaling, rotating, skewing, distorting), envelope transformation of a shape with either the select tool, envelope transforms or the sub-selection tool.
- Handout: Flash object transform tutorial
- Arranging objects
- Topics: align, stack, combine, break objects
- Handout: Flash arranging objects tutorial
- Colors and gradients
- Previews: Colors
- Handout: Flash colors tutorial
- Shape tweening
- Previews: Simple shape morph, Simple shape and motion morph, traced bitmaps morph, Shape tweening in motion
- Handout: Flash shape tweening tutorial
Week 4
Theme: Basic interactiviy
- Introduction to buttons and some ActionScript
- Topics: Button frame-by-frame animation, creating slide shows (timeline navigation) with buttons
- Previews: Simple slide show, Rocket launcher, Menus with buttons, Image maps with pictures.
- Handout: Flash button tutorial
Week 5
Theme: Using sound and the button component
- Discussion
- Some past homework
- mid-term exam and term projects
- planning of term projects, the design process
- What do we mean by "quality?"
- The Term project
- Flash components, in particular the button component
- Previews: Slide show with component button menu,
- Handout: Flash component button tutorial
- Sounds
- Previews: Cloud animation with sound, (Drag and drop edutainment
- Handout: Flash sound tutorial (adding sound to Frames)
- Term projects
- Objectives must be defined
Week 6
Theme: Importing and augmenting videos
- Flash Video topics
- The FLV Video playback component
- The captioning component
- Dealing with cue points (jumping to cue points, using events generated by cue points)
- Previews:
- Simple use of the FLVPLayback component
- flash-cs3-video-simple-server-caption.html (captions)
- flash-cs3-video-simple-server-caption2.html (captions)
- flash-cs3-video-simple-embedd.html (simple embedding)
- flash-cs3-video-timeline-embedd.html (embedding with animation)
- flash-cs3-video-cue-events.html (use cue points to trigger animations)
- Handout: Flash Video component tutorial
Week 7
Theme: Special effects, masks and more interactivity
- Special effects
- Timeline special effects (short summary)
- Previews: flash-cs3-special-timeline-effects.html
- Mask and masked layers
- Previews: flash-cs3-mask.html.
- Handout: Flash special effects tutorial (not handed out, print it or see chapter 6 of the textbook)
- Interactivity
- Previews: Cat manipulation - Remote cat manipulation - Drag and drop edutainment
- Handout: ActionScript 3 interactive objects tutorial
- Handout: Flash drag and drop tutorial (not distributed, contains longer AS code)
- Handout: Flash games tutorial (not distributed, only contains an example)
- Publishing on a web site (Wednesday)
- Copy all the files *.swf *.js *.html and resources (e.g. sound or video)
- Fix the generated HTML
- You also may modify some publish settings
- Term projects
- Final advice
Week 8
- Presentation of term projects
Each student will present his/her term project (unless the class is too big) You will have to show the application on the teacher's machine and the projector. There is no need to prepare slides but be prepared to answer questions !
Homework
(individual files)
New series:
- Homework 1
- Homework 2
- Homework 3
- Mid term exam
- Homework 4
- Homework 5
- Homework 6
- Homework 7
- Term project
- final exam
- Grading form
- homework template (to paste into the Flash file documentation: Modify->Document or hit CTRL-J)
Old series: