Smple School

Week 1: introduction show (IMED1345)

Class overview, look over syllabus, overview of Flash CS4 Professional.

Hi, and welcome to school.smple.com. An online tool for class videos, resources and discussions.

Go ahead and register to the right so I have some contact info for you. By next week you will be able to use that same username/password to discuss the lessons posted on this site.

Resources: Flash CS4 Feature Tour from tv.adobe.com

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Week 2: what happens if I push this button?show (IMED1345)

Familiarizing ourselves with the different tools and panels in Flash

This is the ins and outs of every button you'll be using this semester in Flash CS4. We'll go through and review the names, what they do and all of their options.

Resources: Flash CS4 Panels and Tools Overview

Download PDF of panel and tools screenshots.

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Week 3: learn how to draw show (IMED1345)

Use Flash's extensive tool bar to draw a simple character.

ASSIGNMENT 1: draw a scene that can be animated.

In your homework, include all the drawing tools you have learned with a robust scene including multiple objects and a background. Keep in mind you can use this in your animation homework assignment.

Here are some various links to online tutorials and styles for drawing characters. Some of them go into animating also if you'd like to step ahead a bit.

Design and Animate a Simple Character: 2 Part Tutorial
Animator vs. Animation
Home Star Runner

If you have any questions, comments. Hit me up below.

Resources:

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Week 5 and 6: make things move show (IMED1345)

Make movie clips and graphics move using timeline animation.

Assignment 2: create a short animation

Using all of the tools we've learned create a brief animation that involves multiple movie clips.

Resources: Good animation tutorials for Flash CS4

Class files: animations.zip

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Week 8: Action what?show (IMED1345)

Intro to Action Script 3.0 and button creation

In this lesson we'll set up a basic stage layout with two buttons that go back and forth between two frame labels controlled with Action Script 3.

Resources: A reference .fla

Starting-with-AS3.pdf

IMED-1345-Week8.fla

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Week 11: shedding some bytes hide (IMED1345)

Use Actionscript 3 to load external text into a textbox with a scrollbar and an external image as a header.

Resources: Source .fla with external content

IMED-1345-Week11.zip

Tutorial on Loading External Graphics and Text
Loading-Text-and-Graphics-with-AS3.pdf

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Week 12: advaced features show (IMED1345)

An overview of some other features Flash has to offer and what you will learn in Multimedia II.

Resources: Final Requirements PDF

IMED-1345-Final-Requirements.pdf

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Week 2: Making Buttons with ActionScript 3.0 show (IMED2345)

Use AS3 to create a button that can be reused multiple times.

Resources: An .fla and video of the class tutorial.

IMED-2345-Week2.fla

IMED 2345 - ActionScript 3.0 Buttons from John McMullen on Vimeo.

Using ActionScript 3.0 in Flash CS4 to create dynamic buttons. These buttons contain simple animations on mouse over and mouse out as well as provide navigation throughout the timeline when the button is clicked.

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Week 3: the only quiz you'll ever see show (IMED2345)

Using the if and else statements, create a multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank quiz which keeps score.
ASSIGNMENT 1: create a fun quiz

Details for your homework assignment:

Minimum of 5 questions long.
Display complete number right/wrong at end of quiz with an if/else statement.
Use the techniques learned in Week 2 when creating your next button.
Name all layers and use graphical elements throughout the quiz.

Resources: The source file, video on its way.

IMED-2345-Week3.fla

IMED 2345 - ActionScript 3.0 Quiz from John McMullen on Vimeo.

Using ActionScript 3.0 in Flash CS4 to create a simple quiz. The code used in this tutorial will teach you how to use variables to store a score and add or subtract from that score as well as using if statements to determine if an answer is true or false.

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Week 4: learn how to draw show (IMED2345)

Create an interactive drawing tool with different brush styles.

Learning ActionScript 3.0's graphics class to create a drawing application that allows the user to change brush size and color.

Resources: A .fla and video to come.

IMED-2345-Week4.fla

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Week 5 and 6: YouTube on steroids show (IMED2345)

Assignment 1 Due
Creating playback controls for a .flv

Resources: Here's a zipped file with everything in it and a PDF tutorial.

IMED-2345-FLV-Player.pdf
IMED-2345-Week5-6.zip

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Week 7: take control of your .mp3s show (IMED2345)

Everything you need to know about playing those beloved .mp3's

Resources: Here are the class files

IMED-2345-Week7.zip

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Week 9: databases and XML show (IMED2345)

Using an XML file, create an image gallery to dynamically load and display all of your favorite photos.

After completing this lesson you will be able to import an XML file and manipulate it's contents to load external photos. We will use thumbnails sorted into rows and columns, then reference a separate URL to load a larger image.

Resources: Great online tutorial link and source files.

The guys over at Republic of Code put together this amazing tutorial. We're covering the basics of loading the gallery and displaying the images here. If you would like to learn tweening with ActionScript, continue the tutorial here.

To save this guy some bandwidth, here are the source files needed for the project: IMED-2345-Week9.zip

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Week 10: break the mold show (IMED2345)

Show creative techniques when designing Flash based web sites and how to think out of the box with user interface.

Resources: Various Links to Creative Flash Sites

Casio Exilim Lab - When your mouse hovers over one of the menu items, it opens up revealing the sub menu. This is done using a MovieClip and simply telling it to gotoAndPlay whatever they're open state is.
website: http://www.casioexilimlab.com/

Mister Coo - When you click on one of the sections, it animated to reveal the content in an interesting way. I'm not even going to start explaining how they did this. It's complicated.
website: http://www.mistercoo.com/indexe.html

Bio Bak
Bio Bak - A simple fun and colorful menu "flys" you around this website. Outside of being a fun menu design, the site is incredible and can cause slight drain bamage. Explore and have fun.
website: http://bio-bak.nl/

Chipotle - Besides having some of the best burritos in town, this bean factory has a rather nice website. After the logo spins onto the stage you can interact with it to make the menu "pop" out. Enjoy.
website: http://www.chipotle.com/

Kazsh
Kazsh - You may think nothing of this website at first glance, but upon hovering over some of the menu items you will quickly realize just how amazing it is. Click through on some of them and your head just might explode.
website: http://www.kazsh.com/

Wild Card Inc
wildcard Inc. - Yeah, so this is basically an entire site that is a menu for two links. One of which opens Outlook for you. So, technically, a rockin' menu with 1 link. Show offs.
website: http://wildcardinc.jp/

Happy Company Screenshot
Happy - As far as I can tell, that's their company name. Great website based on pre-production all the way to final product. Using masks and some simple tweening techniques, this site is classy.
website: http://www.happy.fb.se/

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Week 10: animate with actionscript 3 show (IMED2345)

Use Actionscript 3's tweening class to create dynamic animations.

Resources: Source .fla file with samples

IMED-2345-Week10.fla

IMED-2345-Week10-Slider.fla

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Week 11: full screen flash show (IMED2345)

Use Actionscript 3 with Flash to create a full screen website. We will learn how to resize and reposition portions of the site to fit the full screen mode.

Resources: Source .fla with sample .html file

IMED-2345-Week11.zip - Be sure to unzip all contents into a new folder before you open the .fla. The code will not work if you do not.

IMED-2345-Final-Requirments.pdf

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Smple School

Week 1: introduction show (IMED1345)

Resources: Flash CS4 Feature Tour from tv.adobe.com

Week 2: what happens if I push this button?show (IMED1345)

Resources: Flash CS4 Panels and Tools Overview