Topic: Flash basics for a pre-beginner

I use authorware all the time in my current job...just got a huge new assignment and think this may be a good time to get and learn flash. I would like to create some short, cheesy, 2-D animated scenes to insert into my authorware training.

I don't have flash, never looked at it. I've seen some really awful flash web sites, but I also believe in its potential for good. I've read the flash tutorials over at gurusnetwork, and I've taken the online 'tour' at macromedia web site.

I guess my main questions are:

1) Is flash an appropriate tool for the project(s) I have in mind...short (30 sec or less) simple, 2-D animations, mainly for humor to lighten up the training?

2) What is the learning curve for flash...or at least what I want to do with it?

3) A few of the characters of my proposed animation are already 'drawn' in photoshop, using paths (think 'Southpark' style, 2-D simplicity). How simple / difficult will it be to animate them doing simple things...walking across a room, talking, moving a stack of papers on a desk, etc.?

4) I don't quite understand the whole actionscript thing. Can someone please put this into English? Is all animation done in actionscript...or just some parts? Is it a substitute for the timeline or something extra? I don't quite get it and the macromedia demo tour only confused me more.

5) Any other words of advice or wisdom would be most appreciated.

Thank you
mobrul

ok, let's see...

1. yup, i think flash would work well for the basic concept of what you want to do

2. for basic stuff, simple keyed animation, it's not too hard. go thru the tutorials included in the Flash help (in the actual program) and you should be able to do the basic stuff you want to pretty quick.

3. you'll have to save out each piece separately, and as i'm assuming you'll have them going over backgrounds, etc., you may want to save them out as PNGs with an alpha channel so as to preserve their transparency in Flash.

4. think of actionscript and flash animation as being like javascript working with html. you can make a page in just html, but javascript makes some things easier and let's you do more than you could with just html. but you could still make a page with html and it would work fine.

actionscript is mostly used for advanced interactivity, interaction with the mouse, prpgrammatic movement, etc. you can animate some things with actionscript (that's how most physics-based stuff, like josh davis' stuff at praystation is done) but it's not necessary for most things. simple actionscript is used for basic tasks within flash (goto frame, mouse actions on release, stop, loadMovie, etc.)

5. my advice would be to pick up the Foundation Flash 5 book from Friends of ED, best intro book to flash i've seen and it'll answer a LOT of your questions. hope that helps.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

I agree with all FIG say, I would only add that even simple animation with flash require some practice. To download a trial version of swish could help to add nice effects in a flash movie.
See http://www.swishzone.com/



[This message has been edited by nobodywebsite (edited 05-11-2002).]

That was a superb analysis Fig gave. ActionScript is crucial for interactivity. It's also the only thing I find *fun* about Flash (but I do find it so very fun!!). But it's not a requirement for animation.

I would say a requirement for frame based animation of the type you describe is not so much a background in Flash as it is a background in some sort of animation!

Walking across a romm could turn out to be fairly complex. A ball *gliding* across a room is a snap. Walking means the arms, legs, torso, maybe even head are independant symbols that are hinged to move independantly.

Talking involves more than just flapping a hinged mandible!

Moving something on a desk ....

You get what I mean. I doubt Flash would be any harder than any other animation tool, and I also think you could easily duck the ActionScript boogeyman entirely, but I don't know that anything is going to make it "easy"

'Cept maybe something like Poser which is meant for modeling people and has some animation capabilities if I remember right. But then that would probably be *too* realistic!

Thank you for the prompt responses. I'm kinda busy here lately, but I hope to download a trial of flash today and give it a few days work before I go buy the real thing. I have a feeling flash is going to do just what I want, but had to ask before going and spending that precious time and money.

I'm sure you'll be hearing more questions from me.

Fig, you say to export my characters from PS as png files...this leads me to believe I have to build my animation frame by frame??
I was hoping I could export the paths, then set two keyframes, move the path pieces to the new location, and flash would interpolate the range of motion. It's still time consuming, sure, but better than frame by frame...
I read something about 'shape tweening'...am I misreading something?

Thanks again for the advice
mobrul

shape tweening is honestly something i've found to be very "iffy" in my experience and are done with purely vector objects. however, what you're describing isn't a shape tween but a motion tween, you set a key frame and set another keyframe a few frames later and flash will interpret the motion inbetween. technically this is frame-by-frame animation, you just have a computer figuring out the tweens for you rather than a jr animator doing them so yes, you can still export as png's and you'll turn those images into symbols and animate them in flash using keyframes and motion tweening.

chris


KAIROSinteractive