Posted: 1-Jul-2002
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4 1/2 out of 5 Mice |
Vendor: Macromedia | Type: COMMERCIAL |
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Reviewer: KC MacGregor | Class: PRODUCTIVITY |
Overview
Flash 5 software is a Web authoring tool that allows you to illustrate, animate,
create interactive sequencing, edit sound, and program applications with its own
ActionScript language. This means that not only can you create animations with Flash,
you can liven up your web page with interactive Flash banners, buttons, bars, sounds,
and even entire games. Flash has set the standard for Web-friendly vector animation.
The Flash 5 software makes web pages more interesting via interactive animations,
and they don't take forever to load. The quick download is naturally the Holy Grail
of Web developers. No matter how great your production values, no user will wait
around very long for the chance to view your graphics doing the light fantastic across
their browser. This is still especially true for those users who have not graduated
to a DSL or cable line, still crawling the web via a standard dial-up modem. How
does the Flash software address the issue of speedy access? Animating vector graphics
instead of bit maps is the basis for the quick Flash download. Think of drawing an
iceberg or a million ice cubes. Which takes less time? In the following example,
my 227K Photoshop bitmap was imported into Flash 5, and was incorporated as a vector
graphic into the following 32K Flash animation, Dreams:
From this basic concept
of creating animations, Macromedia has developed Flash into a Web authoring tool
through a succession of Flash generations.
Using Flash
The online tutorial included with Flash 5 provided a good basic overview, but I also
found it helpful to use a couple of guidebooks to navigate the array of pull-down
menus, panels, tabs and toolboxes. (Coriolis' Flash 5: Visual Insight was
particularly easy to follow for a beginner.) In addition, the Flash manual is provided
under the Help menu and includes a simple but very helpful search feature. Flash
also has a very generous online community of support which provides aid to the beginner
via online tutorials, listservs and forums.
Screenshot of Flash 5 interface
As in traditional
cel animation, Flash works in layers. The type of animation Flash produces is sometimes
referred to as "flipbook". Think of Rocky and Bullwinkle or SouthPark and
you get the idea. It's a pretty straightforward approach to animation and Flash 5
doesn't require great drawing skill. By using effects like transparencies, even simple
animations come to life.
An example of transparencies created with Alpha Effects:
What's more important
is the ability to keep track of the flow of the different layers that comprise your
small movie. One must become thoroughly familiar with the interface that produces
the animation layers. This consists of a stage, where objects are manipulated and
symbols can also be created and edited, a scrolling timeline of frames where the
animation action progresses, a window graphing the various layers, and a library
where symbols used in the animation are stored.
Flash seemed to have a mind of its own at times. For example, I found it too easy
to suddenly find myself drawing and painting on a different layer than the one I
thought I was drawing on. What you see on the stage is an amalgamation of different
layers displaying all the different designs elements, or "objects". One
has to remember to check periodically that one hasn't inadvertently clicked on an
object which sends one to that object's layer. You can toggle off layers you aren't
working on or simply lock them, and this goes a long way to solving the object problem.
Nonetheless, property management does require constant vigilance. Locking and unlocking
layers can become a time-consuming habit. The real estate on my iMac's standard 15-inch
monitor got crowded between the animation stage and the panels used to create and
manipulate objects and action. I learned to merge the panels together into a comfortable
configuration by docking the tabs I used most into just a couple of panels. Very
cool.
Pull-down menus offer a wide variety of possibilities for brush, pencil, and paintbucket
tools, not unlike Photoshop's in appearance. These tools however have their own unique
Flash 5 functions. For example, the smoothing function of the pencil tool allows
you to draw lines that curve with no unsightly jags. The paintbrush tool has the
remarkably cool feature of allowing you to paint behind a shape you've created or
you can choose another brush option which allows you to color within the lines without
bleeding outside. There's a palette menu from which to choose object colors and the
paintbucket allows you to create fills of solids and gradients. A bitmapped image
imported from a paint program can be converted to a vector image in Flash via the
TraceBitmap command under the Modify menu. It's a powerful feature, but can take
some trial and error tweaking to get desired results, depending on the complexity
of the image.
The Flash 5 paint and draw programs are so much fun you may find you don't need to
import at all, and can do all your image creation within Flash. Flash allows you
to do traditional cel by cel animation where every cel is drawn on a separate frame.
It's a very traditional and labor intensive method to create animations. (Click
here for an example of a cel by cel animation I created in Flash)
Flash also offers another type of animation, much easier to create, which it calls motion and shape "tweening". Vector-based graphics, one-tenth the size of bitmaps, make possible the easy resizing and reshaping that is a staple of tweening. You can select two frames on your animation timeline, insert your graphic at those two points, select a motion path for motion tweens, and Flash calculates the movement and/or shape changes between the two frames. Tweening creates images and type that float, spin, grow larger and smaller, and change shape and color without having to draw a multitude of frames.