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What I won't cover:
- Basic digital art terminology, such as layers and animation frames. Definitions should be easy to find elsewhere.
- I assume you'll have web space for your site.
- Flash MX provides good tutorials on using the basic drawing and text tools, so I won't go over those.
- Animation in Flash; I'll cover that in another tutorial.
Plan it out before you start!
So, you're aware of the advantages a Flash website can give you: super-compressed images and sounds,
interactivity with the viewer, animations, and all good things.
Here's a website that uses Flash to its fullest extent.
The main page (or "splash" page) should have understandable access points to every important feature
of your site, since it's the first thing viewers will see. Many professional artists, like
Brianne and
Valerie, prepare a staged area for a series of
images to appear in. This is great for online portfolios or web comics. Check out
Making Fiends and
Home Star Runner for more neat design ideas.
Okay then. My Flash site is going to be incredible, revolutionary, and I can't wait to start ... but it will
require lots of time and hard work. I'm impatient, so I just threw together a temporary, half-assed site,
which I will use for this tutorial. Be forewarned: even this half-assed
Flash site required a few hours of planning.
- Choose a resolution size
When you start a new project in Flash, it has default dimensions. You can make your webpages any resolution
size (it's easiest to make your whole site one size), but remember that some viewers have small monitors. I
made my Flash site 800 x 550 pixels, which is probably the largest you should go for.
- Stay organized by using layers
You'll add layers by clicking on the
icon in the Timeline above your project. Layers are useful for keeping the components of your page
(graphics, text, buttons, animations, music) separate, just like in Photoshop or Premiere.
Ignore the frames in the Timeline for now!
As you see above, my main page has three simple layers. I can lock these layers, or make them invisible or
just an outline. This helps me to to place components (text, graphics, buttons) where they'll look best.
- Putting stuff on the page
In addition to drawing art inside Flash, you can import images (CTRL+R). They may inflate your file size,
but fear not; Flash is great at compressing things! You won't even need to upload the orginal image files.
You can import sound files as well (I'll cover how to implement them later).
Within Flash, there are exactly three different components that you can have:
- Graphic: A piece of art which may or may not have multiple layers. Think of it as a piece of
clip art that you can move around, or a bunch of lines and shapes grouped together. The easiest way to
construct a complex graphic is to draw its basic shape, press F8 to name it as a Graphic, and
continue working on it, adding layers as you go. If, perchance, you decide you want the thing to
animate, you'll need to convert it to a Movie Clip. Read on.
- Button: You know what this is. It has four frames, and I'll cover it later.
- Movie Clip: An animation clip, which may or may not contain Graphics and many layers.
It uses the Timeline frames.
You can convert any of the above components into another thing; for example, you can make a Graphic into a Movie,
or a Movie into a Button. In Flash, this is known as "changing the Symbol Behavior". To do it, you
can select the art and press F8. Another way is to go to your Library by pressing F11.
The Library is
like a storage bin for all the components of your project. Right-click on any component and choose
Properties to change its behavior.
All these layers and components (or "symbols" in the Flash tongue) can get confusing to the uninitiated.
In Flash, it's possible to have layers within a Graphic within another Graphic within another Graphic with more
layers, within a Movie Clip that has more Graphics, within more Movie Clips with frames and layers, with a Scene
that has Buttons and Graphics galore ... all connected to other Scenes within one single file. It's ridiculous.
I think of Flash as a fractal type of set-up, where you can only concentrate on one area at a time, though it
may have a near-infinite amount of such areas. There's always something inside of something else.
It takes practice to get used to it and learn terminology.
Remember to save your project frequently as you work.
- Having multiple pages
Most web designs require more than one page, of course. But Flash uses weird terminology for things like
webpages and art, which is why many artists have trouble learning it, even if they're
proficient in programs like Photoshop. In Flash, a Scene acts as a webpage. You'll observe that your new
Flash project says Scene 1 on that bar between the Timeline and the project window. At some point,
you'll probably want to make a button that links to (or goes to) a new scene/page when you click it.
I'll cover buttons later; first, let's make a new scene so your button will have meaning in its life!
PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
SOON TO BE CONTINUED . . .
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All material Copyright © 2008 Abigail Goldsmith, except where otherwise noted.
All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without prior written permission from the author.
Document updated: 03 August 2007 - 01:41:30
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