PE4 Flash

Flash is a lot different from what I expected.  I’ve heard of Flash but I really thought it was a type of video viewer, like a Quicktime player, or perhaps a program to convert videos to some kind of internet-uploadable files.  I was only seeing a very small part of what Flash is actually capable of!

Flash is an application to create animated graphics or short movies.  It seems to be particularly good for web applications because it creates smaller file sizes that will load more easily and not have so much time lost for buffering video.  In this era of 5-second attention spans, that’s incredibly important!

I’m watching the basic tutorials and learning how to create layers.  A long time ago, I had a class on Photoshop and from what I can remember, the layer thing seems to be about the same.  In order to have the most control over your graphics and effects, you want to create them on different layers.  You can lock and unlock layers to be able to edit.

I’m also beginning to experiment with the “Deco” tool.  It lets you create quick graphics of trees, vines, fire, flowers, flames, smoke, and lightening.  You can even easily create animated flames and smoke here.  Flash automatically creates a timeline for you that shows when and for how long the graphics appear and move.

I haven’t tried this yet, but the tutorials say that you can import pictures and video with pretty much any kind of file.  I am really interested in this feature because I do online training videos through Udutu, a Web 2.0 tool.  Udutu requires that its video files need to be uploaded as Flash files, and I’ve always had to call on the editors at Full Sail to convert my videos for me.  Perhaps once I learn how to import video and export Flash files, I can work much more quickly right from my laptop!

I’m going to learn more about this, and what else I can do with Flash.  Stay tuned: more blogs to follow, and check out my Deco tool fire and smoke test video below!