Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Essentials

William Heldman is the Computer Science and Game Development instructor at Warren Tech (www.warrentech.org), a Career and Technical Education (CTE) high school in Lakewood, Colorado. He is the author or coauthor of several Sybex books, including the CompTIA Project+ Study Guide.

Introduction xxi
CHAPTER 1 Before Jumping into Flash: Rich Media Design


Principles and Practice 1


Working with Clients to Create Rich Media Projects 1


What Is Rich Media? 2


Viewing Great Rich Media Examples 3


Identifying Your Content’s Purpose and Audience 7


Choosing the Best Media Types 10


Addressing Accessibility Issues in Rich Media 12


Designing for People Who Are Blind 14


Designing for Low–Vision Viewers 18


Designing for Hearing–Impaired and Deaf Viewers 23


Designing for People with Physical Limitations 27


Designing for People with Cognitive Limitations 28


Designing for People with Photosensitive Epilepsy 28


Understanding Project Management 101 28


Identifying a Project 29


Creating the Project Plan 29


Creating the Project Schedule 31


Properly Closing Out the Project 32


Understanding Copyright Issues When Using Others’ Work 32


Understanding Text Copyright 33


Understanding Music Copyright 34


Understanding Video Copyright 34


Understanding Animation Copyright 34


Understanding Trademarks 35


CHAPTER 2 Getting Acquainted with Flash 37


Opening Flash for the First Time 37


Using Flash Panels 40


Frequently Used Panels 41


Other Handy Panels 43


Understanding Flash Workspaces 45


Understanding Flash File Types 47


FLA 48


SWF 48


HTML 49


CHAPTER 3 Drawing Shapes in Flash 51


Drawing Standard Shapes 51


Understanding Merge vs. Object Drawing 58


Creating Objects in Merge Drawing Mode 58


Creating Objects in Object Drawing Mode 60


Drawing Primitive Shapes 62


Drawing Polygonal or Star Shapes with the PolyStar Tool 65


Making Artsy Shapes with the Deco Tool 66


Drawing Other Shapes 68


Working with Color in Flash 75


Using kuler 75


Saving a Color Set 77


Working with Color Gradients 77


CHAPTER 4 Getting Started with the Timeline 81


Becoming Acquainted with the Timeline 81


Adding Different Frame Types to Your Animation 83


Copying and Deleting Frames 88


Frame Names 90


Organizing Your Work with Layers 91


Creating a UFO Scene 92


Hanging the Moon 96


Organizing Your Layers: Using Layer Folders 98


Working with Special Layer Types 102


Aligning Objects with Snapping 105


CHAPTER 5 Adding Flash Text and Fonts to Your Creat ions 109


Understanding When You Can Use TLF Text Fields 110


Flash Player 110


ActionScript 111


Flash Builder 112


Picking the Best Font 112


Choosing Serif or Sans Serif 112


Embedding Your Font 114


Using Placeholder Text 116


Checking Your Spelling 116


Using Classic Text 117


Deciding to Use Classic Text 117


Inserting Classic Text Boxes 117


Using Text Layout Framework 120


Deciding to Use TLF 120


Inserting TLF Text Boxes 121


CHAPTER 6 Working with Flash Symbols 129


Creating Graphic Symbols 129


Converting Assets to a Symbol 130


Grouping Assets 132


Using the Library 134


Using the Symbols from the Library 134


Implementing a Library Naming Convention 135


Grouping Common Objects in the Library 135


Creating Button Symbols 136


Manually Creating a Button 138


Turning the Button into an Instance 140


Editing a Button 140


Using a Prebuilt Button 143


Creating Movie Clip Symbols 144


Creating and Editing Symbol Instances 146


Understanding ActionScript Linkages 148


CHAPTER 7 Developing Simple Flash Animations 155


Developing Storyboards to Describe Your Animation 155


Creating a Storyboard for Cow Abduction 156


Animating the Cow Abduction 159


Creating a Frame–by–Frame Animation 165


Differentiating between a Stage Animation and a Movie Clip 171


CHAPTER 8 Using Tweens 175


Creating Shape Tweens 175


Making Changes to a Shape Tween 178


Adding Shape Hints 181


Creating Motion Tweens 183


Rotating Objects 185


Using Parallax Scrolling 186


Applying Granular Changes with the Motion Editor 189


Making Animations More Realistic with Easing 190


Using Motion Presets 192


Understanding Classic Tweens 194


CHAPTER 9 Techniques for Creating More Technical Animations 199


Creating a Bicycle with Rotating Wheels 199


Drawing the Crank Arms 200


Creating the Pedals 202


Repeating the Process for the Three Arcs 204


Creating the Sprocket 206


Creating the Tires 207


Creating the Bike Frame 209


Assembling the Bike 211


Setting Different Speeds Using Parallax Scrolling 213


Creating the Buildings 213


Adding Some Clouds 215


Assembling the Scene 216


Adding a Highway 217


Creating a Bouncing Ball with Color Gradients, Motion Presets, and Eases 218


Creating the Basketball Court’s Floor 218


Adding Pizzazz with Custom Color Gradients 219


Creating a Backboard by Combining Motion Tweens 222


Tweaking the Animation 225


Adding Perspective to the Basketball Scene with 3D Tools 225


CHAPTER 10 Creating Characters with Inverse Kinematics 231


Boning a Character 231


Snapping a Photo as a Base 231


Tracing Your Picture 233


Inserting Bones into Your Character 237


Constricting Animations 240


Animating IK’d Objects 242


Creating the Bicycle Animation 242


Creating Bouncing Movement Using IK Springs 244


CHAPTER 11 Working with Audio 251


Creating a Rich Media Project with Audio 251


Creating the Drum Set 253


Drawing the Bass Drum 254


Drawing the Bass Drum Hoops 254


Making the Drum Head 255


Moving the Back Hoop into the Back of the Front Hoop 256


Creating the Drum Shell 257


Drawing and Placing the Lugs and Rods 258


Creating the Tom–Toms and Snare 260


Making the Cymbals and Cymbal Stands 261


Drawing the Cymbal Stand 261


Drawing the Scissor–Style Brace for the Cymbal Stand Legs 263


Creating the Cymbal 266


Creating the High–Hat Stand and Cymbals 267


Adding Sounds to the Drums 268


Importing the Sounds and Preparing for ActionScript 268


Creating the Buttons 269


Adding a Hit Zone to the Cymbals 271


Compressing Audio 272


Using the Sounds Supplied with Flash 273


Putting a Sound on the Stage 274


Controlling a Sound with a Code Snippet 274


CHAPTER 12 Working with Video 279


Understanding Supported Flash Video File Types 279


Converting Non–supported File Types 281


Using the Import Video Wizard 282


Setting Up ActionScript Cue Points 289


Adding ActionScript Cue Points to Your Video 289


Adding Parameters to Cue Points 292


Adding the Buttons 293


CHAPTER 13 Working with ActionScript 299


Getting Started with ActionScript 299


ActionScript Basics 300


Working with Dynamic Text 303


Programmatically Adjusting a Text Object’s Coordinates and Formatting 304


Testing Your Work 305


Programming ActionScript to Calculate Your BMI 308


Writing the Code to Declare Variables and Hide Dynamic Text Fields 310


Garnering User Input 312


Calculating and Outputting the Results 314


Publishing Your Work 317


APPENDIX A Adobe Rich Media Communication Using Flash Professional CS6 Objectives 323


APPENDIX B Next Steps 327


Index 331