In this collection of video lessons, the guru of Flash Craig Campbell demonstrates various techniques and tricks that you might need to create high quality animations and screen savers for Flash. When recording used Flash Professional 8 and Flash MX 2004.
Course Content:
1 - Introduction (Running Time - 2:00)
In this video, Craig introduces himself and tells you what you can expect from this video series.
2 - Your First Intro, Part 1 (Running Time - 27:41)
In this tutorial, you jump in and get your feet wet by creating your first animated intro in Flash.
3 - Your First Intro, Part 2 (Running Time - 13:10)
This tutorial concludes the animation started in the previous video.
4 - Falling Text Effect (Running Time - 13:21)
Starting with this video, Craig begins to walk you through different effects you might find in animated intros across the web. In this video, he shows you how to create a text effect where the letters fall into place individually in a wave pattern.
5 - Digital Passcode Effect (Running Time - 14:06)
In this video, you'll learn how to create a digital display that scrolls through numerous letters while slowly revealing one letter at a time.
6 - Tracing an Image (Running Time - 13:11)
In this video, Craig shows you how to use the line tool and the subselect tool to trace an image on the stage. Once you have the image traced, there are many effects you can add to the picture.
7 - Flashing and Glowing Effects (Running Time - 15:52)
Once you have the car image traced, Craig shows you how to make the car flash or glow using the outline that you created.
8 - Car Animation (Running Time - 23:51)
In this video, you'll learn how to use masks to animate the outline as well as the inside of an image.
9 - Exit Text Effect (Running Time - 17:40)
Instead of just deleting a block of text once you're done with it in your animation, Craig shows you a creative way to animate your text off of the stage.
10 - Text Blur Effect with Flash Pro. 8 (Running Time - 11:52)
In this video, Craig will show you how to create a blurred text effects in just a few simple steps using Flash Professional 8's new filters.
11 - Text Blur Effect with Older Versions of Flash (Running Time - 10:20)
If you don't have Flash Professional 8, don't worry. We've got your back. In this video, Craig will show you how to achieve the same blur text effect using Flash MX 2004 and Photoshop.
12 - Swiper Effect (Running Time - 5:25)
When we get to our big project animation, we'll be seeing a lot of this particular effect. In this video, Craig creates a "swiper", which will move across the stage, revealing a block of text as it does so.
13 - Perspective Text (Running Time - 10:51)
This video can be really cool if you allow yourself to get creative with it. Craig will discuss the concept of vanishing points and then use it to show you how to give a flat block of text some perspective.
14 - Motion Blur Effect (Running Time - 5:26)
If you want to zoom a picture onto the stage, why not make it a little more interesting by giving it a motion blur effect? In this video, Craig will show you how to liven up your animation using blurs along with some tried and true animation techniques.
15 - Timeline Effects (Running Time - 8:15)
In this video, Craig will show you how to accomplish the very things he says not to do when he walks you through the use of timeline effects.
16 - Picture Fade-in Effect (Running Time - 16:04)
Animate your picture onto the stage with a little life! In this video, Craig will show you how to create a complex mask animation that will reveal your picture in small chunks.
17 - Text Box Effect (Running Time - 18:53)
This video illustrates another creative way to animate your text onto the stage using fuzzy boxes that move into place and then Flash, revealing the text underneath.
18 - Stringing Effects Together (Running Time - 12:18)
Learning how to create effects is only the first step in creating a full animation. You also need to know how to string the effects together in order to make your animation cohesive. In this video, Craig shows you how.
PART 2: CREATING THE INTRO (Click here to see the finished intro)
19 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 1 (Running Time - 13:00)
Now that he's shown you numerous effects you can use in your Flash intros, it's time to get started creating an entire Flash intro from scratch. In this video, Craig sets up the design for the preloader screen.
20 - Building a Preloader, 'The Company' Animation, Part 2 (Running Time - 23:45)
In this video, you'll learn how to add actionscript to your animation that interacts with a dynamic text field to show your users how much of the file has been loaded.
21 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 3 (Running Time - 23:03)
In this video, Craig takes all the pieces of the preloader animation and shows you how to animate them off the stage once the preloader has finished loading.
22 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 4 (Running Time - 22:29)
This video walks you through animating the first section of the intro, using a souped-up version of the swiper animation from video 12.
23 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 5 (Running Time - 2:46)
Oops! Even the teacher makes a mistake every now and then. In this video, Craig takes you back to a glitch in the preloader animation and shows you how to fix it quickly and easily.
24 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 6 (Running Time - 14:57)
In this video, Craig adds a looping question mark animation to the background of the first section of the intro.
25 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 7 (Running Time - 15:18)
Now that the first section has finished animating in, Craig shows you how to animate the objects off the stage.
26 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 8 (Running Time - 19:27)
Time for section 2 of the animation. In this video, Craig sets up the stage for this section.
27 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 9 (Running Time - 10:13)
Now that the stage is set for the second section of the animation, Craig gets you started animating it.
28 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 10 (Running Time - 11:47)
We'll use the familiar swiper effect again in this video to continue our animation.
29 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 11 (Running Time - 21:18)
In this video, we'll revisit an effect from video 16 and spice it up a little bit in order to create a couple of photo fade-ins for our animation.
30 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 12 (Running Time - 26:17)
We'll wrap up the second section of our animation in this video, by once again animating everything off of the screen.
31 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 13 (Running Time - 26:41)
In this video, Craig kicks off the third major section of the animation with a map, some animated cities, and some more swiper text effects.
32 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 14 (Running Time - 17:16)
Craig concludes the third section by making some adjustments and then animating everything off the stage.
33 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 15 (Running Time - 10:11)
With a couple more swiper effects, Craig gets started on the final phase of the animated intro.
34 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 16 (Running Time - 11:25)
In this video, Craig shows you how to achieve a really cool coin flip effect using the logo, and then he animates in the final pieces of the intro.
35 - 'The Company' Animation, Part 17 (Running Time - 15:47)
In this video, Craig wraps up the animation by showing you how to tie all of the movie clips together to make one long, cohesive unit out of your animation.
36 - Adding Sound 'The Company' Animation, Part 18 (Running Time - 15:33)
Now that the animation is complete, Craig shows you how to add background music and sounds effects to your animated intro.
37 - Finding Music and Sound Effects (Running Time - 4:10)
In this video, Craig shows you a great resource for locating and downloading music and sound effects files for your Flash projects.