Terms/Work Area

Like all great performance autos, your Flash machine has an elegant, easy-to-comprehend instrument panel. Let's take a look at it. (Skim this section for now, just to introduce the information. Don't worry about mastering the concepts yet. You'll have a chance to review after we tinker with a few things).

Toolbar and Modifiers: The toolbar should look familiar if you have used graphics tools before. If not, don't worry - it is very easy to use. The toolbar is divided into two sections: the tools (on top) and the modifiers (on the bottom). When you select a tool in the top section, the modifier changes to show the available options for that tool, (like your floating options menus in Photoshop or Illustrator).

Stage: Think of the stage as the document you are creating. Basically, it identifies the area that will be visible in the final product.

Library: This is where you store all the little bits that make up your flash production. ***Warning - tangent ! *** Everyone knows the story "Green Eggs and Ham" - yes everyone in every culture everywhere in the world. But did you know that Dr. Seuss, (who must have been a Ph.D. in web design), actually wrote the story in response to a challenge to write an engaging tale with a very limited number of words (I think about 50)? This economy - reusable components in a piece of art unfolding over time - is the name of the game in Flash. The more you can reuse the things in your library in favor of re-drawing something similar, the more efficient (smaller file size, smoother operation) your Flash movie will be.

Symbols: A symbol is any thing you want to designate as a reusable entity in a Flash movie; (a movie is what you are making - AKA .swf file). Think of a symbol like this: Disney Fantasia is to .gif animation as claymation is to Flash. In both Disney hand-drawn animation and .gif animations each frame is drawn by hand. Claymation, on the other hand, uses the same clay model from frame to frame, just moved a little each time to produce the illusion of motion. You wouldn't think of making a brand new clay Godzilla for every frame of a feature movie - at that rate of production it would take Godzilla weeks to devour Tokyo! (We don't have that kind of time! We need to call in the army, with all of their model jeeps and tanks with stationary, molded treads). Think of symbols as your clay Godzillas, and parts thereof.

Timeline: Made up of frames (each tiny box is a frame), the timeline shows how the movie progresses over time - just like the frames of a movie reel.

Layers: Think overhead transparencies - the kind on cellophane sheets. You can add layers to a movie and move each layer higher and lower, relative to each other. Non-transparent items in the top layers obscure items in the lower layers, as you would expect. (Exact same concept as layers in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.).

Other Terms

Instance: every time a reusable movie clip (symbol) is used in a movie - from the time that it appears to the time that it disappears - it is called an instance. For example, if you were animating a SouthPark cartoon in Flash, you would have a symbol for the front view of Cartman's head (a circle with a stocking cap on top). You would reuse the same drawing over and over every time you wanted to see Cartman from the front; and each time you used that drawing is called an instance.

Scene: You can divide the movie into scenes, which is a good idea to keep the organization clear. You can work on each scene as if it were its own movie, then link them all together in whatever way you choose.

Tweening: In the old days of hand-drawn animation there would be a lead animator (like Walt Disney), and a bunch of grunts. The lead animator would draw the key frames, and the lackeys would fill in the (obvious) space in between. Flash is your grunt/lackey. You can use the tweening function to have your characters move from point to point, change size, shape, color, etc. very smoothly.

Keyframes: You can designate any frame to be a keyframe. You will want to do this to have certain things occur at specific times, or in a particular order. Basically keyframes are the place markers for events in a movie.

.fla file: This is the file format for the movie in the editing software.

.swf file: This is what you publish. Browsers read .swf

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