OVERVIEW A DIFFERENT KIND OF FLASH Exploring Adobe Flash Difficulty Level:
Total Time:
20 minutes
10 minutes 30 MINUTES
SITUATION: When you hear the word flash, usually, you first think of a camera flash or maybe a superhero's name. This Flash is very different. You have the opportunity to try it, explore its environment, change stage properties, and finally, save and publish a Flash file.
TARGET SKILLS: ► Creating a New Flash File ► Changing Frame Speed ► Changing Stage Size and Color ► Viewing Rulers, Grid, Guides, and Snapping ► Saving and Publishing Flash File
OBJECTIVES: ► Familiarize themselves with the Flash environment ► Change Flash properties ► Save and publish Flash file
VALUES INTEGRATION: ► Being open to learning and familiarizing yourself with something new.
Downloads: ADifferentKindOfFlash.fla
MOTIVATE Motivation Title: 4D - Animation Actions and posses Group game Motivation Description: TOTAL TIME: 7 minutes
http://technokids.ph/t-lib/print/flash/1st-quarter/meeting-1 1/8 10/18/2017 Meeting 1 1 Before starting the activity, cut the words found in Actions.pdf. Follow the lines to make the size of the words equal. Put the words inside a bowl.
2 Divide the class into four groups. So that it is faster to conduct the ice breaker, group the students sitting near each other. Instruct them to form a straight line together with their group.
3 Students are tasked to act the scenario given to them. Each student must represent a step in acting the scene just like in a frame-by-frame animation. The group who makes the best real-life animation will receive a point.
4 Pick the scenario to be acted from the bowl. Read the scenario loudly. For each item, 15 seconds will be given for the groups to think of their individual poses which should represent the scenario chosen.
5 Students should hold their pose until the teacher says so. If a member of a group moves, it will disqualify his/her group for the current round.
6 The group who has the most number of points after five rounds will be the winning group. In case of a tie, tie-breaker scenarios should be done until a winning group is determined.
7 You can give an incentive or a reward for the winning group and a consequence for the group who gathers the least number of points, for example, asking them to showcase their talent or do a comedic act. You may proceed to your lesson after.
TEACH Teaching Tips: Discuss all the terminologies first. Let them be familiarized with the environment before trying something moderately challenging. Also teach them the shortcuts just so they have an idea but it’s not required.
Lecture: Adobe Flash is a platform for creating digital media content, including graphics, animation, audio, video and interactive media. Flash is most commonly used to display animated and/or interactive content on web pages but it can be used for other applications as well. In recent years Flash has also become a leader in online video delivery.
CREATING A NEW FILE
When Adobe Flash opens, it displays a start page wherein you can choose to open a recently edited document, create new kinds of document or create a document using a pre-built template.
INTERFACE After you’ve created a new document, you will see a blank canvass surrounded with a lot of controls. The big white rectangle at the middle is called the Stage. It is where you put the objects that you will use for your project, such as text, images, buttons and animation. Panels are those that surround your stage. The stage and the panels are commonly called the Flash workspace or authoring environment.
A panel found at the right is called Properties panel (if you can’t find it there, you will find it by clicking Window > Properties and it will be shown on the right side). The properties panel contains the frame speed, stage size and stage color. Frame speed (FPS) is a numerical value which indicates how many frames per second are displayed when running a flash file. Stage size indicates the size (width and height) of the stage via pixels (px). It can also be changed to inches, points, centimeters and millimeters. Stage color is a small rectangle which indicates the color of the stage. To change, just click on the small square and choose from the available colors.
RULERS Ruler bars are located on the top and left sides of the Stage and serve several purposes. They let you measure the width and height of Flash elements and they let you place guides on the screen to control placement of objects on the Stage.
GRID Grid is the vertical and horizontal lines that are 10 pixels apart from each other by default. This is helpful when drawing.
GUIDES The need for grids and guides varies depending upon the type of document you are working on. They are useful for aligning text and graphics to interface elements and are an invaluable tool for creating a well composed and proportioned layout.
SNAPPING Snapping is used to automatically align graphic elements with one another.
SAVING Saving a flash file is very important if you want to use it for some other time in the future. Failing to save your flash file and closing the application will cause your file to be lost forever. It is a good practice to save every 5 minutes just in case something bad happens. Better safe than sorry.
PUBLISHING Publishing a flash file will let you see your whole project. Your flash file is published as .swf by default but it can be published in different formats as well including swc, gif, jpeg, png, exe and app.
LEARN S T EP S : 1 Open Adobe Flash. Click on Start > All Programs > Adobe Flash. This will open Adobe Flash.
Flash, you will see a starting page wherein you can choose to open a recently edited document, create new kinds of document or create a document using a pre-built template. Click on ActionScript 2.0 under the Create New column.
3 Familiarize yourself with the Interface. You
will now see the Stage which is the big white rectangle in the middle and the panels which are the controls surrounding the Stage. The Timeline is located below the stage. The timeline is one of the most important toolbars in Flash. It includes frames and keyframes which will be discussed further in the lesson.
3-2 Located in the right of the stage are the
Properties and Library panels. The Properties panel is used to the objects to be used on the stage and even to modify the stage itself. The Library pane is used to store objects that you will use in your flash file.
4 Adjust document Properties (Frame Speed,
Stage Size, Stage Color). As mentioned earlier, the Properties panel is located in the right of the stage, you use this to modify objects that you will use on your stage and even modify the stage itself. When you click on the stage and click on the Properties panel on the right, it will display the Publish, Properties and SWF history. We will only focus on the Properties.
4-2 To modify frame speed, click and hold the
number beside “FPS”. Drag left to lessen the
http://technokids.ph/t-lib/print/flash/1st-quarter/meeting-1 5/8 10/18/2017 Meeting 1 frames that will be displayed per second. Drag right to increase the frames to be displayed per second. You can also click on the value of the FPS and input the rate of how many frames will be displayed per second. Change the frame speed to 10.
5 Change stage size. To modify stage size,
click and drag the number beside “Size”. Dragging left would decrease the value of the width. Dragging right would increase it. You can also input the specific size by clicking on the value of the width and inputting the desired width. This procedure is also the same for width. The numbers beside the “Size” indicates the width and height respectively. Change the stage size to 800x600 pixels (800 width, 600 height).
6 Change stage color. To modify the stage
color, click on the small rectangle beside “Stage”. It will display the different colors available. Just click on one color to change the color of the stage. You can also input your desired color using the color code. Just input the 6-character code after you click on the default color code value. Change the stage color to light pink (color code: #FF9999).
7 Show Rulers. To show rulers, click on View
> Rulers.
8 Show Grid. To show grid, click on View >
Grid > Show grid.
9 Show Guide. To show guide, click on View >
Guide > Show guide. To edit guide, click on View > Guide > Edit guide.
