how hard is it?

I have an opportunity to do something that requires me to have an animation for a presentation.

I'll be working on a mac. Used to use hypercard WAY back in the day to screw around.

2/6/2006 10:55:23 AM

macromedia itself has a steep learning curve if you've got little/no experience, but if you use a program like Swish its relatively easy.

2/6/2006 11:24:40 AM

well it should be a straighforward animation

I suppose there will be prompts and user-controlled stop and start points.

I think in the end I'll have to learn what they have in their videography room.

I downloaded the trial of Flash 8. I see what you mean about the learning curve, but I was able to learn Pro Tools for recording realtively quickly and I have till the end of the semester.

2/6/2006 11:39:53 AM

if it's simple, it shouldn't be too hard. all I know of flash is simple, but it didn't take long to learn

2/6/2006 12:02:11 PM

flash is NOT easy.

good luck chief.

-ZiP!-

2/6/2006 12:14:13 PM

^how about some advice then?

2/6/2006 12:19:13 PM

flash is NOT easy.

good luck chief.

2/6/2006 12:19:42 PM

*sigh*

so much for people being helpful

----thanks for those who are

[Edited on February 6, 2006 at 12:24 PM. Reason : ... ]

2/6/2006 12:20:32 PM

Quote :

"I have till the end of the semester."

Anything's possible then.

I know that I've struggled with it a lot (and will be some more this evening after work), but it might just be that actionscripting and some of the normal frame-based navigational stuff hasn't come easy to me.

-ZiP!-

2/6/2006 12:28:05 PM

To be productive with flash, you have to be an expert at animation as well as actionscripting. That's why the learning curve is so steep. Your best buy is to take some sort of class. However, some good tutorials can be found on the internet with some effort.

2/6/2006 12:38:45 PM

that's fair enough

I appreciate it. I understand the curve.

can things done in one program possibly be moved into another?

such as using an easier program that was mentioned like swish and then moving it into flash on campus to work with the professor on it?

I just don't want to go up there next week and not know anything at all about what I'm getting into.
spending time looking around on the internet is helping out, but for me asking questions and getting answers can make a lot more sense. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not a layman.

2/6/2006 12:46:55 PM

I got hired to a job as a flash developer when I had about 5 minutes of flash experience.

It's not hard if you do your homework on it. Get Flash for Dummies, and do all of the stuff in that book, and you will have a basic understanding of it.



What exactly is your project? I can possibly help and give you some tips.

2/6/2006 12:57:00 PM

swishmax is easy to use, and free 30 days-trial

2/6/2006 1:49:56 PM

one more question: I only have 20gigs of HD space left, is there any reason to think it won't be enough?

2/6/2006 9:36:35 PM

thats tons of space. programs like Macromedia Director aren't built to compress very well, but Flash has always been praised for its good compression. If you toss several feature-length (2 hr +) quicktime films in there at high definition quality, you may run into space problems with 20 GB.

-ZiP!-

2/6/2006 9:39:59 PM

2/6/2006 9:45:38 PM

go to hell

2/6/2006 9:54:21 PM

?

2/6/2006 10:16:44 PM

I've been working over on Centennial as a Flash Animator for around a year now.

The initial learning curve seems hard not because there's a lot to know (although there is a lot to know), but you really have to change the way you think about things. My advice to you is to just sit down and spend a lot of time with the program looking at the way things work and trying new things. It's really something that just has to be felt out. Picking up a book would be a good way to start. If you're in the wrong mindset or expect the program to act like anything else you've used, you're in for a lot of resistance.

I think you'd have the best luck with tinkering in Flash as much as you can, and looking up a tutorial when you want to find out something specific. What exactly are you trying to do in Flash anyway? That has a huge bearing on what advice anyone can give.

2/7/2006 7:16:48 PM