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09-Vector Based Animation (Flash Essentials)

This document provides an overview of Adobe Flash, including: - A brief history of Flash and its use for web animation, video integration, and rich internet applications - Flash's dominance as a platform for desktop video with over 98% market penetration - Examples of interactive Flash websites and games - Advantages and disadvantages of using Flash - How to embed Flash files and interact with the Flash interface and timeline

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curlicue
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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427 views

09-Vector Based Animation (Flash Essentials)

This document provides an overview of Adobe Flash, including: - A brief history of Flash and its use for web animation, video integration, and rich internet applications - Flash's dominance as a platform for desktop video with over 98% market penetration - Examples of interactive Flash websites and games - Advantages and disadvantages of using Flash - How to embed Flash files and interact with the Flash interface and timeline

Uploaded by

curlicue
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Flash Animation

An introductory level guide for getting acquainted with Flash

Multimedia Design Technologies


9th Lecture

March 25, 2008


A Brief History:
Adobe Flash, which was previously called Macromedia Flash, is
a set of multimedia technologies developed and distributed by
Adobe Systems.
First introduced in 1996, Flash technology has become a
popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web
pages, creating animations, advertisements , integrating video
into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet
applications.

March 25, 2008


Flash Player Penetration:
Flash as a format has become the
dominant desktop video player and
become the player of choice,
because of its streaming ability.
Adobe has over a 98 percent
market penetration for desktop
users. Here is a chart from the
Adobe website, comparing it to
other popular video streaming
players.

Millward Brown survey, conducted December 2007.

March 25, 2008


Version Penetration:
“Adobe's Flash player has
done more to enable the
current growth of interactive
marketing and advances in
design/interaction than any
other plug-in in history.
Penetration numbers have
bounded to close to 100%
for past versions of the
player. “

Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer.

March 25, 2008


Use of Flash with Video:
Flash is increasingly used as
a way to display and stream
video clips on web pages.
Flash is used as the basis for
many popular video sites,
including YouTube and
Google Video.

March 25, 2008


Flash Advantages:
• Flash can make a web site more attractive, interactive and dynamic.
• Flash uses vector graphics, which means that the graphics can be scaled to any
size without losing clarity or quality.
• Flash Player has a small install size, quick download time, and fast initialization
time.
• Flash can also be used to create innovative banner ads, games and multimedia
interactive movies that can be displayed on a web site.
• Flash-based movies are likely to look the same on all browsers and across all
computer platforms.
• Flash movies can also be exported to construct stand-alone executable
applications, which are ideal for CD-ROMs, kiosk programs and screensavers.

March 25, 2008


Flash Interactive Website
Example:

http://www.wakeupyourphone.com/

March 25, 2008


Flash Interactive Game
Example:

http://www.scruffs-game.com/

March 25, 2008


Flash Interactive Banner Ads:

March 25, 2008


Flash Disadvantages:
• The Annoyance Factor – Depending on how the flash was
designed it could come off to be a serious distraction from the main
content.
• The main disadvantage of Flash is that the content is not currently
indexed by search engines.
• Accessibility Issues for Screen Readers etc…

March 25, 2008


Progressive Enhancement
Example:
Using web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic
content and functionality of a web page, while also providing those with better
bandwidth or more advanced browser software an enhanced version of the page.

With JavaScript On With JavaScript Off

http://virtualtour.wayne.edu/

March 25, 2008


Embedding Flash into HTML:
<html>
<object width="400" height="300" id="movie“>
<param name="movie" value="movie.swf">
<embed src="movie.swf" quality="high" width="400" height="300“
name="movie" align="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
</object>
</html>

March 25, 2008


Flash Interface:

March 25, 2008


Flash Timeline:

March 25, 2008


Flash Symbols:
Graphic symbols are reusable static images that are used mainly to create
animations - Any drawn vector/plain text/imported bitmap (photo), or
combinations of these, can be converted into a single controllable object: as a
graphic symbol. They have only one frame in their timeline.

Button symbols are used for timeline navigation - They add interactivity to the
movie and respond to mouse clicks, key press or rollovers/rollout, and other
actions. You define the graphics associated with various button states
(Up/Over/Down/Hit), and then assign actions to the instance of a button. They
have 4 frames in their timeline - one each for the up, over and down states, and
one to define the hit area of the button.

Movieclip symbols are reusable pieces of flash animation - Consisting of one


or more graphic/button symbols - thus they are flash movies within your flash
movie. They have their own non-restricted Timeline (any number of layers and
frames - just like the main timeline) that plays independent of the main movie's
Timeline. The best thing about using movieclips is that you can control them from
actionscript.
March 25, 2008
Flash Instances:
Instances are like copies of your symbol. They can be placed throughout
your flash movie and then easily changed.

Why use instances?


•They save time - you won't have to re-make objects, just place new copies
of them.
•The save file size - instances don't take up as much space as new objects, so
the more instances you use, the faster the flash player will load the movie.
•Make a change one time - If you use symbols and instances, just changing
the symbol will adjust the look of all your instances.

March 25, 2008


Future of Flash:
• New text rendering, code named "Saffron": this new text renderer will bring extremely sharp text
display to the Flash Player, and I think it looks even clearer than ClearType.

• Significant performance improvements: one of these is the addition of bitmap caching, which
enables graphics and components to be displayed much more quickly. In the demo (shown on a
Mac), some moving components jump from about 14fps to 125fps.

• Realtime graphic effects: an array of new effects are being built into the Flash Player to enable
rapid display and to keep content download size small. These effects include things like glows,
blurs, drop shadows, color matrix, and others. They can be applied live to any objects in Flash,
including graphics, text, and even video. Since these are applied live, they can react interactively
and also reduces authoring time as it eliminates several post-processing steps in Photoshop or
Fireworks that are required to achieve these effects today.

• Realtime video alpha channel: video will have the added capability of a transparent alpha
channel, enabling live composition of non-rectangular video on top of background elements
(even other background video).

Kevin Lynch - Chief Software Architect at Adobe


http://www.klynch.com/archives/000073.html

March 25, 2008


Flash Resources:

http://www.kirupa.com/
http://www.flashkit.com/
http://www.bestflashanimationsite.com/resources/

Basic Flash Tutorials


http://www.smartwebby.com/Flash/flash_symbols.asp
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash8/tween.htm
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash8/simple_animation.htm

Flash Tenth Anniversary and future of flash info


http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/special/flashanniversary/

March 25, 2008

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