Flash Course

If you're new to Flash, AcademyX's Flash training will have you creating compelling drawings, animations, designs, web ads, forms, and games in no time. And if you already have some Flash experience, the course will cut short your learning curve and ensure that you know how to use all the new features, including time-savers like one-click animation and prebuilt animations.

You'll leave the Flash training class confident in your ability to use all that Flash has to offer, including advanced features like adding video and audio and using ActionScript programming. In our Flash training you'll learn how to:

Creating & Formatting Objects using Flash

Flash offers rich drawing capabilities, from creating simple shapes to building complex illustrations. You will get hands-on experience - and have some fun - creating gradients and transparency effects and working with filters to create drop shadows, blurs, glows, and beveled edges to text or symbols. You'll learn how to save more time by using the library to store symbols you create, as well as imported images, sounds, and movie clips. Our Flash training class covers how to:

Draw shapes and define your own color swatches
Use gradients and transparency effects to create richer graphics and text
Seamlessly blend shapes into your stage with soft edges
Expand drawing possibilities with freeform drawing and editing
Use filters to add compelling visual effects

Creating Timeline Animations in Flash

If you feel intimidated by the idea of creating animations, think again: We'll show you just how easy it is to create frame-by-frame animations and motion effects. You will understand how to control the display of content with the timeline and keyframes. With motion and shape "tweening," you'll learn how to animate almost any aspect of an object, such as its size, rotation angle, filter settings, or transparency, to create animations that zoom, spin, fly, bounce, or fade out. The only limitation is your imagination! We'll teach you how to:

Set the foundation by organizing artwork and animations into layers
Create your first animation using the timeline and keyframes
Create a frame-by-frame animation (similar to a cartoon flipbook)
Loop animations efficiently with Movie clip animations
Create "short-cut" animations with motion tweening
Morph shapes with shape tweening
Speed up or slow down animation effects

Designing With Vector Illustration

Once you know how to use Flash's pen and pencil tools to create vector drawings, the sky's the limit. Vector drawings are typically smaller in file size than pixel-based images, and they are scalable without loss of quality, which makes them ideal for smooth animations and fast-loading web applications. Increase your creative power as we show you how to:

Create the drawings you want with the pen and pencil tools
Refine your drawing with vector masks, for example, to hide areas or remove unwanted backgrounds

Flash: Using Interactive Components

Flash is not just for stand-alone animations. In this section, we explore the use of interactive components - from creating simple buttons to complex navigation systems, even video games. And for when you have to set up a form, we'll show you how to use Flash to design effective interactive forms. We'll also look at how you can use dynamic content, such as stock quotes for example, to save time and create interesting, current web sites. In this part of the Flash training, you'll learn how to:

Create user-interaction buttons
Use ActionScript to create animations that respond to viewer input
Design and build a form by easily dragging and dropping form components
Import content from an external source, such as a database, text file, or XML file

Inserting Video & Sound with Flash

Most web sites or web-based presentations today either need video or sound content or could be greatly enhanced by the addition of video and sound. We'll show you how easy it is to use Flash to incorporate multimedia content. After you complete this section of the Flash training, you'll know how to:

Deal with concepts like video frame size, frame rate, data rate, and streaming
Encode a video file to optimize its performance and file size for your intended use
Incorporate a video in a Flash file
Add the power of sound to your projects

Flash Publishing

We'll tie it all up by showing you how to make sure your Flash work gets to its intended audience. When you publish a Flash file, it is exported to the .SWF format, and browsers with the Flash plug-in can view the Flash project. This section covers issues of accessibility, optimization, and testing around publishing your Flash. You will leave the Flash Fundamentals training course knowing how to:

Apply accessibility enhancements so that users with alternative browsing devices can hear and/or read you content
Optimize your Flash content as much as possible to reduce file size while maintaining quality
Test your Flash application to verify it loads in reasonable time
Publish a finalized project

Prerequisites to Flash training::

Familiarity with basic paint tools such as those found in PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, or MS Paint

Flash training is offered at four locations::

Flash Fundamentals Training