PUBLISHING 1231 Intermediate New Media Publishing (FLASH) Instructor: Mak (Mahmoud) Abdel-Hai Office: A248 Phone: 604-3

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1 PUBLISHING 1231 Intermediate New Media Publishing (FLASH) Instructor: Mak (Mahmoud) Abdel-Hai Office: A248 Phone: , ext. 1 Dates and times: s: 1.30 PM 7.25 PM (from 12-May-11 till 04-Aug-11) Fridays: 3.30 PM 5.25 PM (from 13-May-10 till 17-June-11) Mondays: 3.30 PM 5.25 PM (from 20-June-10 till 01-Aug-11) Office hours: Fridays: 1.30 PM 3.25 PM (from 13-May-10 till 10-June-11) Mondays: 1.30 PM 3.25 PM (from 20-June-10 till 01-Aug-11) Course Description: This project-based course will introduce students to basic animation, interactivity and programming for the Web using Adobe Flash software. Students will complete exercises and projects, possibly including a practical lab exam to demonstrate their understanding of concepts and competency with the software. Students will design and produce a web-based portfolio website. They will prepare and submit a pre-production (copy content, content map, design) and production schedule as well as give brief weekly written progress reports. Course Objectives: This course will introduce students to 2D & 3D animation and interactivity programming for the web using Adobe Flash CS4. As with the other courses in the Publishing program, practical experience is fundamental to learning these skills. Thus, as mentioned above, students will complete exercises, projects, and presentations to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts covered within the course. Learning outcomes: Upon successful completion of this course, a student will have the ability to: Recognize and utilize all tools in the toolbar in Flash. Recognize and utilize different windows in the Flash application interface. Explain the purpose of the timeline and the stage. Perform Flash common tasks such as motion tweening, creating a motion guide, shape tweening, masking and Keyframing. Use symbols, the library features and effectively manage assets. Explain how assets are successfully imported from other applications such as PhotoShop files, Illustrator files, QuickTime movies, and audio files. 1

2 Perform basic programming tasks with Action Script 3 such as controlling timelines, loading external assets (images, other swf files and text files) dynamically, using conditional statements, creating and manipulating variables, creating loops, and using common classes. Plan, design and produce a Flash based website or an interactive Flash based presentation. Discuss and implement methods for reducing and optimizing file size when authoring for the web. Optional textbook: Adobe Flash CS5 Professional classroom in a book. Recommended websites: (Flash developer center) (Edge newsletter from Adobe. Bi-monthly) (online video tutorials. must purchase a monthly subscription of 25$) Marking criteria: Attendance: 15% Professionalism: 10% Assignments: 40% (around 2-4% for each assignment) Midterm Project: 10% Final Project: 25% Total: 100% Class schedule: Day & Date Topics covered Assignments & projects Due dates May 12th (class / lab) - Course overview. - Intro to Flash. - Vector based versus Raster based applications. - Program interface. - Drawing tools in Flash. - Fill types: solid colors, gradients and images. - Stroke options. - Shapes verses objects. - Editing shapes. - Editing objects. - Grouping and ungrouping. - Converting elements to Symbols. - Importing elements from PhotoShop or Illustrator to Flash. - Different types of symbols: MovieClips, graphics & buttons. - Motion tween. - Organizing elements in layers for 1) Research Project 1: Finding a Flash based website and examining the graphics used in it. 2) Creating a website interface using Flash, PhotoShop and Illustrator. 3) Creating an animated intro. for a website or a presentation. May 19th 2

3 Friday May 13th May 19th (class / lab) Friday May 20th May 26th (class / lab) animation. Lab time to work on assignments 1, 2, and 3. - Organizing assets in the library - Presentation: Research Project 1 - shape tween. - Adjusting animation curves - Ease in and out. Rotation. - Managing timelines - Copying and pasting keyframes. - Navigating between timelines. - Editing symbols. - Modifying existing animation. - Animating on a Motion Path. - Adding a layer mask. - Opening files as libraries - Intro. to using text in flash: working with static text - Text and shape tween - Optimizing curves - Marking assignments 2 and 3. Lab time to work on assignments 4 and 5. - Review: Animating on a Motion Path and Masking - Options for working with images: Tracing bitmaps and breaking apart. - Filters and symbols - Color properties and symbols. - Transfer modes and symbols. - Timeline Effects - Nesting timelines for animation and for building interface elements. - Building buttons: static, hidden and animated buttons. - Basics of interactivity. - Structure of an Action Script statement. - How to find & correct mistakes in a statement. - Working with the actions panel. - Stopping and playing timelines. - Moving a timeline to a particular frame using actions script. -Marking assignments 6, 7, and 8. 4) Creating an animated image map with directions. 5) Creating an image gallery with masks 6) Nesting timelines exercise. 7) Research Project 2: Finding a Flash based website and examining it s timelines structure. May 26th June 2nd Friday May 27th NO LAB ON THIS DAY 3

4 June 2nd (class / lab) Friday June 3rd June 9th (class / lab) Friday June 10th June 16th (class / lab) Monday June 20th June 23rd (class / lab) - Review: Nesting timelines. - Review: creating buttons. - Review: Action Script statements. - Working with frame labels. - Working with instance names. - Action script: adding a link to a web page or an address. - In class tutorial: building a simple website made of 4 pages including a links page, a gallery page and an animated intro. - Marking assignments 6. - Presentation: Research Project 2. Lab time to work on assignment 8. - Finishing the in class tutorial: building a simple website. - Q & A about midterm project. - Conditional statements. - Creating variables. - Structure of and planning for a conditional application. - Marking assignments 8. Lab time to work on assignments 9 and 10. 8) Proposal for the midterm project: build simple site made of 4 pages and an intro. Site must include a gallery page and a links page. 9) Storyboards or flow charts for midterm project. 10) importing a random background for a simple webpage June 9th June 16th - Midterm Project. 11) Midterm Project. June 23rd Lab time to work on Midterm Project. - Midterm Project presentation. - The var syntax in Action Script 3 - Creating instances of classes. - Understanding the Loader class. - Understanding the URLRequest class. - Understanding the URLLoader class. - Dynamically importing external swf files. 12) Create a Flash based web page with a) dynamically imported and formatted text, b) dynamically imported images and c) a preloader. June 30th 4

5 Monday June 27th June 30th (class / lab) Monday July 4th July 7th (class / lab) - Different options for organizing a project when dynamically importing external swf files. Lab time to work on assignment Working with dynamic text. - Working with input text. - Dynamically importing text files. - Formatting text. - Dynamically creating instances of text-area. - Dynamically creating instances of symbols from the library. - creating patterns with Action Script - Creating pre-loaders. Lab time to work on assignment Review: working with dynamic and input text. - Review: creating instance dynamically. - Working with video in Flash: a quick tutorial about recording and capturing video using FCP or IMOVIE - Flash video encoder, understanding video compression. - Adding cue points. - Defining a skin to an FLV file. - Creating custom skins for videos. - Intro to working with Sound files. - Controlling sound files. - Intro to working with Flash UI components. - Controlling Components using Action Script. - In class tutorial: building a website utilizing and integrating video, audio, formatting text and UI components. - Marking assignment ) Create a simple news page that loads 3 different external text files. With an action script based pattern backround 14) Building a multimedia website including video, audio files and artist s info/image gallery. 15) Final Project Proposal. July 14th Monday July 11th Lab time to work on assignments 14, and 15 July 14th (class / lab) - Review: working with sound files. - Review: UI components. - Advanced text formatting: working 16) Final Project storyboards or flow charts. July 21st 5

6 Monday July 18th July 21st (class / lab) Monday July 25th July 28th (class / lab) Monday August 1st August 4th (class / lab) with CSS and HTML text. - working with XML files. - Intro to creating custom classes. - Marking assignments 14 & 15 Lab time to work on assignments Working on the Final Project. - Marking assignment 16. Lab time to work on Final Project. 17) Final Project. - Working on the Final Project. 17) Final Project. August 4th Lab time to work on Final Project. - Final Project presentations. - Q & A. - Course review Late Assignments: Please refer to the department s late assignments policy document (the booklet you received in September) Attendance: Please refer to the department s attendance policy document (the booklet you received in September). 6