Project 7: Flash Portfolio

      This is our last project of the year. In this project, we have to use the video that we have created for lab 29, and the pop-ups created in lab 30 and further enhance it into a fully functional Flash e-portfolio that showcases all the labs and projects we created using Adobe Flash CS6. We have to create links of the labs and projects inside this Flash-portfolio. One advice from my teach is to not write the link to the remote server, because if the website is taken down, the links will not work anything.

      In my project I created 3 scenes. The first for the video, the second for the labs, and the last for my projects. The first scene is the same as what is done in lab 30, but I have added the buttons which will be seen and used in every scene. In the project scene, we only did 3 projects with Flash excluding this one, so there wasn't too much to put, so I have just 3 links and an image of each. On the lab scene, I simply just added all the links to it. But it felt too plain and lack of design, so I rearranged every link in the lab scene, made room in the middle and made it a preview space, so when u hover a link, there are images and examples to shown. I posted 2 videos in my web page, the first one is the one without the lab preview option, and the second one is with the preview option so to show the difference.

http://techteach.us/DD2015/HJiahua/Projects/Project7/PR7_Jiahua_DD.html

Lab 30: Flash Pop-ups

      In this lab, we need to use our videos that we just created in the previous lab for our flash portfolio and added pop up symbols using Adobe Flash CS6. This means that we need to learn to code it with Action Script, so we watched a video from adobe of it. It was very helpful. We first need to convert our mp4 or mov file to flv file by using Adobe Media Encoder, because that is the format that works best with Flash. Then in import it into out stage. We get to choose different type of playback buttons to add to our video. Then we set up cue points in the video, which are the time to cue the symbols to come out.

      Now when the video goes to certain length, symbols related to what I am talking about will pop up and disappear after a few seconds. This requires the codes we learned from the video. For example, when I mention something about Photoshop in the video, a symbol that I have created with Flash will pop up in the screen, then disappear after a few seconds. All of the symbols are created through Flash based on the original design with alterations.

Lab 28: Bone Tool

      In Adobe Flash CS6, there is a very interesting and useful tool called the bone tool. Just by the name you might not have guessed what it is used for, but it makes sense after you do. It is the tool to make objects and shapes to move smoothly as an armature which is essential to creating animations. So in this lab, this is what we have to do. Create an short animation of something, anything using the bone tool. To use the bone tool, you need to first create a origin point to be the center point of the shape, then create other points and those points will act like joints, like our body parts.

     In this lab I decided to create a blue robot running...and that's basically it, not much to explain. I first created a few shapes, for the head, body, hand, and legs, and a gradient background. The main part are the legs, because that is the part that I used the bone tool to make it look like it is running by create a center point between the body and the legs, a point each at the knees, and a point each at the foot. Then just move everything like a motion tween. I wanted to make it look like it is a gif the goes continuously, but the timing was too difficult, but I will try again next time.