Assignments

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Lecture Calendar

Text Book:
Flash MX for Windows and Macintosh Visual Quickstart Guide by K. Ulrich. Peachpit Press, 2002. ISBN: 0201794810

Click Here for the Nov. 27 Class Assignment

Final Project - Due Monday December 16th at 8:10 AM

I will not accept late projects and you must absolutely attend the final presentation.

Objective: To use Flash MX to creat a simple website.

Description: Using Flash you have to create a simple website following your proposed topic and flowchart in Assignment 6. Your website must contain the following things:

1. Graphic User Interface: buttons (graphic or text) to navigate from one section to the other.
2. Coherent flow of navigation and ease of use from section to section.
3. One (at least) shape-tween example incorporated into your design.
4. One (at least) fade (alpha transparency) example incorporated into your design.
5. Movie clips and embeded animations, most of your animated objects should be constructed into movie clips to ensure good functionality.
6. Sound: one sound at least in your page. Go easy here, remember this is a website!
7. Imported raster images, at least one, but you can use as many as you wish.
8. Text Scrolling window (at least one)
9. At least one external link (to a URL outside your page)
10. Creation of an Executable file (Projector file) for both platforms.

Extra Points:

• Preloader (you don't have to use it if your site doesn't need it)
• Dynamically Loaded Text
• Masks (static, animated or dynamic draggable)

Remember that you can always add any extra functionality and features, these are just the requirements. If any of the above items absolutely does not apply to your site, talk to me and we can negotiate.

Presentation Format: You will deliver the final version of this site to me on a CD-ROM at the beginning of the final exam meeting (8:10 AM on Dec. 16). All the machines in the lab have CD-ROM burners, please ask me or a lab assistant for help if you have not used them before. The CD-ROM should clearly display your name somewhere!!

The CD-Rom should contain:

The .swf file

The .html where the .swf is embeded

Mac Projector file (.hqx)

PC Projector file (.exe)

Note: Remeber your file names should be all lower case, with no spaces and with no strange characters!!

Note: If you own server space somewhere you can also upload it there, but I still want the CD-ROM!!

Assignment 7 - Due Nov 20

Practice the Scrollbar and Dynamic Text box. You can find a tutorial at: kirupa.com and I PROMISE it works. Create a new example playing with perhaps the background of your document, or the color of the textbox background to make it more interesting. I will not collect this assignment but I will check it on your computer, so bring your file!!

1. Decide on a topic and approximate size for your final project. It will be presented as a website made entirely in Flash. Answer the two following questions and turn them in together with a graphic representation of your navigation tree:

• What is the topic of your website?
• How many sections do you anticipate it will have? (ie: separate pages with content)

2. Navigation Flowchart/Tree for your Flash Website. Following the instructions in class create a navigation tree that will represent the flow of the actions taken by the user within your final website. It will illustrate what will happen when the user gets to your first screen and how they are going to navigate to the sections of the site. This chart shows the hierarchy of the sections and sub-sections allowing you to position the content in a linear manner along the Flash timeline. If you wish to do some further reading on site content organization a good site is the Yale Style Manual. It's mostly HTML oriented, but some of the content can be applied to sites built in Flash too.

Midterm - First Section Due Wednesday Oct. 9

Create a simple storyboard illustrating the sequence/layout of your E-Card. The storyboard must be turned in as a sequence or set of images with their descriptions and other useful information. The following link will take you to a sample template for a multimedia storyboard. The Images don't have to be very artistic but they do have to give a good sense of where things will be and how they will be represented.

The Storyboard pictures are drawn by hand and they can be very rough. Don't spend too much time on this, it's just supposed to give an idea of what's happening in your card.

Midterm - Final Stage -Due Wednesday Oct. 23

Create an Electronic Greeting Card using one of the following themes:

Halloween
Dia De Muertos
Thanksgiving

The card must include at least one instance of each of the following:

1. Tweened Animation
2. Button
3. Movie Clip
4. Sound (here's a link to some sounds on the web)
5. Alpha Transparency Fade
6. Text (moving or static)

The card must be turned in at the beginning of the Class on Oct 23. The file collected will be the .swf and the file name should contain your last name and first initial (castillod.swf).

Assignment 5 - Due Wednesday Oct. 2

Bring your Slide Show files and your Solar System files. They will be collected and uploaded to the server.

Assignmnet 4 - Due Wednesday Sept 25

Set up for the Slide Show Class Exercise

In a new Flash Document create the following:

1. A short animation that will function as a presentation for your slide show. You can use flying text (that needs to be converted to a graphic symbol before animating), you can use drawings or lines. Use your imagination but keep it simple. It shouldn't last more than a 10 seconds (45-60 frames).

2. Make Two buttons, one that will start the slide show and one that will function as a "Next" and "Previous" buttons. If you make an arrow, remember that we can insert it as a separate instance, flip it around and use it as the "Previous" button, this means you don't have to create it if you don't want to. There is a very good button tutorial in your book (Chapter 13).

These buttons need to be converted to Button Symbols and have their "Rollover" state created as well, just like we did in class.

3. Finally, you have to import between 4 and 8 scanned or digitized pictures that you choose into the Flash document. Convert them to Graphic Symbols and name them.

4. Save your file and bring it to class. It is very important that you complete this before Wednesday morning so we can do the class exercise.

Assignment 3- Due Wednesday Sept. 18

Bring at least Six digital photos (can be more if you want). They have to be sized at about 400 pixels on the longest side and JPG high quality compression. They can be photos of anything you want. We are going to build a photo gallery in Flash.

Assignment 2 - Due Wednesday Sept. 11

Finish animating your planets all the way to Pluto in the same manner as we did at school. Bring the .fla file to school so we can keep working on it in class.

Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to create your animation.

Assignment 1 - Due Wednesday Sept. 4

The Solar System:

1. In Flash, Draw the sun and the nine planets. Each object should be in its own layer and the layer should be named accordingly.

2. Draw a Space Ship or Flying Saucer in its own layer and name it.

3. Draw a Comet in its own layer and name it.

4. Make all these objects into separate Graphic Symbols (Insert>Convert to Symbol).

5. Make the Document background Black and draw a few stars in the background layer, and name it Background.

6. Save your document as .fla and bring it to class.

Please take your time to draw the shapes nicely and choose different colors for the planets. The space ship and comet can be very simple shapes as long as I can tell what they are. You can use gradients, but you don't have to. It depends how much detail you want.