Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6 with ACA Certification

508 Pages·2013·120.41 MB·English

by  AGI Creative Team

introduction to
Adobe® Flash® Professional
CS6
Complete Coverage of the Adobe® Certified Associate Exam:
Rich Media Communication using Adobe® Flash® Professional CS6
AUTHOR Fred Gerantabee
ADDITIONAL WRITING Chad Chelius
PROJECT MANAGER Cheri White
VIDEO PRODUCTION Chris Leavey
VP & EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER Don Fowley
EDITOR Bryan Gambrel
DIRECTOR OF SALES Mitchell Beaton
EXECUTIVE MARKETING MANAGER Chris Ruel
ASSISTANT MARKETING MANAGER Debbie Martin
EDITORIAL PROGRAM ASSISTANT Jennifer Lartz
SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER Janis Soo
ASSOCIATE PRODUCTION MANAGER Joel Balbin
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Harry Nolan
COVER DESIGNER Georgina Smith
TECHNOLOGY & MEDIA Tom Kulesa, Wendy Ashenberg
TECHNICAL EDITORS Haziel Olivera, Sean McKnight
ART DIRECTOR Jennifer Smith
This book was set in Bembo by Spoke & Wheel with production and development services provided by American
Graphics Institute. It was printed and bound by Courier Kendallville. The covers were printed by Lehigh Phoenix.
Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cover photo: © Marc Romanelli/Age Fotostock America, Inc.
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depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail
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ISBN 978-1-1183-9407-6
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Preface
Welcome to Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6. Part of Wiley’s Adobe courseware
series, this book is designed as a complete introduction to Adobe Flash Professional for
Creative Suite 6. With this series, we’ve set out to produce a series of textbooks that deliver
compelling and innovative teaching solutions to instructors and superior learning experiences
for students. Infused and informed by in-depth knowledge from Adobe Certified Experts
and Flash professionals who have created many official training titles for Adobe Systems, and
crafted by a publisher known worldwide for the pedagogical quality of its products, these
textbooks maximize skills transfer in minimum time. Students are challenged to reach their
potential by using their new technical skills as highly productive members of the workforce.
This courseware was designed to ensure you receive the topical coverage that is most relevant
to your personal and professional success.
Wiley’s Adobe courseware Program
Wiley’s Adobe courseware series is a complete program for instructors and institutions to
prepare and deliver great courses on Adobe software technologies. With this courseware series,
we recognize that—because of the rapid pace of change in the technology and curriculum
developed by Adobe—there is an ongoing set of needs beyond classroom instruction tools
for an instructor to be ready to teach the course. This courseware program endeavors to
provide solutions for all these needs in a systematic manner in order to ensure a successful and
rewarding course experience for both instructor and student via technical and curriculum
training for instructor readiness with new software releases and a great set of tools for
delivering instruction in the classroom and lab. All are important to the smooth delivery of a
course on Adobe software, and all are provided with Wiley’s Adobe courseware program. We
think about this model as a gauge for ensuring that we completely support you in your goal of
teaching a great course.
VIDEO TUTORIALS
Your Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6 textbook comes with access to approximately
2 hours of online video tutorials. The video tutorials are designed to supplement each lesson
in the book. These video tutorials are created and presented by the authors and demonstrate
topics covered in each lesson or related topics that enhance your understanding of each lesson.
iii

Illustrated Book Tour
Pedagogical Features
The Wiley Adobe courseware and textbooks for Adobe Creative Suite 6 are designed as
complete introductory textbooks on a particular Adobe software product. The books are
also designed to cover all the learning objectives for that product’s related Adobe Certified
Associate (ACA) exam. The ACA exam is industry-recognized and identifies skills and topics
expected for entry-level positions. Each ACA exam item is referred to as an exam objective,
and these objectives are highlighted throughout the textbooks. Many pedagogical features have
been developed specifically for this courseware. Unique features of our task-based approach
include a Lesson Skill Matrix that correlates skills taught in each lesson to the ACA objectives;
Certification Ready sidebars; Step-by-Step exercises; and two levels of increasingly rigorous
lesson-ending activities—Competency Assessment and Proficiency Assessment.
Presenting the extensive procedural information and technical concepts woven throughout
the textbook raises challenges for the student and instructor alike. The Illustrated Book Tour
that follows provides a guide to the rich features contributing to Wiley’s Adobe courseware
pedagogical plan. Following is a list of key features in each lesson designed to prepare students
for success on the certification exams and in the workplace:
• Each lesson begins with a Lesson Skill Matrix. More than a standard list of learning
objectives, the skill matrix correlates each software skill covered in the lesson to the specific
ACA exam objective.
• Each lesson features a real-world Business Case scenario that places the software skills and
knowledge to be acquired in a real-world setting.
• Concise and frequent Step-by-Step instructions teach students new features and provide
an opportunity for hands-on practice. Numbered steps give detailed instructions to help
students learn software skills. The steps also show results and screen images to match what
students should see on their computer screens.
• Illustrations provide visual feedback as students work through the exercises. The images
reinforce key concepts, provide visual clues about the steps, and allow students to check their
progress.
• When the text instructs a student to use a particular tool, tool images are shown within the
text.
• Important technical vocabulary is listed in the Key Terms section at the beginning of the
lesson. When these terms are used later in the lesson, they appear in bold italic type and are
defined. The Glossary contains all of the key terms and their definitions.
• Engaging point-of-use Reader Aids located throughout the lessons tell students why this
topic is relevant (The Bottom Line) and provide students with helpful hints (identified with
the words Take Note) or ways to expand their skills (identified using the text Learning More).
Reader aids also provide additional relevant or background information that adds value to
the lesson.
• Certification Ready features throughout the text signal students where a specific
certification objective is covered. They provide students with a chance to check their
understanding of that particular ACA exam objective and, if necessary, review the section
v
Illustrated Book Tour

of the lesson where it is covered. This courseware provides complete preparation for ACA
certification.
• Each lesson ends with a Skill Summary, recapping the ACA exam skills covered in
the lesson.
• Accompanying video tutorials for each lesson provide a visual way to see selected content
from the each lesson presented by the authors.
• The Knowledge Assessment section provides a total of 20 questions from a mix of True/
False and Multiple Choice, testing students on concepts learned in the lesson.
• Competency Assessment and Proficiency Assessment sections provide progressively
more challenging lesson-ending activities.
• Integrated Circling Back projects provide students with an opportunity to renew and
practice skills learned in previous lessons.
• The student companion website contains the online files needed for each lesson.
vi Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6
Illustrated Book Tour
Lesson 2
Getting Started with
the Drawing Tools
Key Terms Key Terms
• Anchor Points • Line tool
• Combine Objects • Merge Drawing
• Drawing Objects • Pen tool
• gradient • transform
• layers
Skill Objective
Identify general and Flash-specific techniques to create rich media elements that are 2.3 Lesson Skill Matrix
accessible and readable
Organize a Flash document 2.5
Use the Timeline 3.3
Use tools on the Tools panel to select, create, and manipulate graphics and text 4.2
Import and modify graphics 4.3
Create text 4.4
Adjust text properties 4.5
Conduct basic technical tests 5.1
Business case
Business Case There’s an animated fi sh cartoon series that you need to create for a client’s website.
Your artwork is supposed to look more like a cartoon than the real thing. It will be
important for you to learn how to draw artwork from scratch in order to create your
own characters for the cartoon as well as the underwater environment for the fi sh to
live in.
Starting up
Before starting, make sure that your tools and panels are consistent by resetting your
workspace. See “Resetting the Flash workspace” in the Starting up section of this book.
You will work with several fi les from the fl 02lessons folder in this lesson. Make sure that you
have loaded the fl lessons folder onto your hard drive from http://www.wiley.com/college/sc/adobeseries.
See “Loading lesson fi les” in the Starting up section of this book.
Lesson 2: Getting Started with the Drawing Tools 39
Lesson 1
Practicing with the Flash tools
Learning More The Swatches panel
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Swatches panel in Lesson 2, “Getting Started with the Drawing Tools.” Learning More
Figure 1-23: The Flash CS6 Swatches panel.
The six-character code at the top of the Swatches panel is hexadecimal code, the standard
color-coding system for the Web. As you choose colors from the Swatches panel, you’ll see the
hexadecimal value for the selected color displayed at the top. The Color Picker in Adobe CS6
applications such as Illustrator and Photoshop also features hexadecimal values, so you can easily
match colors between applications by copying and pasting the code shown.
Practicing with the Flash tools
Now that you’ve had a tour of the Flash tools and workspace, it’s time to take them for a test
drive. In the following exercises, you’ll complete the illustration shown in fl 0102_fi sh.fl a
while getting the feel for the selection, drawing, and transformation tools. You’ll also use Flash
tweening to create your fi rst animation.
The drawing and selection tools in action
Your fi rst steps will be to create and modify shapes and freehand artwork with the drawing
tools, and then fi ne-tune your work with the selection tools. The selection tools work as a team
with the drawing tools to position and modify shapes, illustrations, and type.
Step-by-Step
Step-by-Step Follow these steps to use the drawing and selection tools
1. Choose File > Open and open the fl 0102.fl a fi le located in the fl 01lessons folder.
2. Choose File > Save As; the Save As dialog box appears. In the Save As text fi eld, type
fl 0102_work.fl a, then navigate to the fl 01lessons folder and press Save.
3. Choose the Selection tool () in the Tools panel. This versatile tool can select, move, and
manipulate objects directly on the Stage.
24 Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6
vii
Illustrated Book Tour

Lesson 1
Practicing with the Flash tools
2. To change the body’s color, click on the Fill color swatch at the bottom of the Tools panel.
In the resulting Swatches panel, choose the orange/yellow gradient located at the bottom
of the panel to apply it to the selected area (Figure 1-29). Deselect the fi sh by choosing
Edit > Deselect All or by clicking off stage in the gray work area. View the results of
applying a gradient in Figure 1-30.
Illustrations
Figure 1-29: Give your fi sh more depth by fi lling it Figure 1-30: View the results of applying a gradient.
with a gradient from your Swatches panel.
Lesson 1
3. The Eyedropper tool () enables you to sample a color from one object and transfer it to
The Flash workspace another. You’ll use it to apply the body color to the fi sh’s fi ns. Using the Selection tool (),
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Property Inspector to set a stroke color and style to apply.
Selection Tool (V) 5. In the Property Inspector, click the Stroke color swatch and type #FF6600 (orange) into
Subselection Tool (A) the hexadecimal fi eld at the top-left corner of the Swatches panel that appears. Press Enter
Free Transform Tool (Q) or Return to set this color.
3D Rotation Tool (W) 6. Click on the Style menu that appears below the color swatches. Choose the ragged style
Lasso Tool (L) from the drop-down menu (Figure 1-31). As shown in Figure 1-32, click on the edge of
Pen Tool (P) the fi sh body to apply the new stroke color and style.
Text Tool (T)
Line Tool (N)
Rectangle Tool (R)
Pencil Tool (Y)
Brush Tool (B)
Deco Tool (U)
Bone Tool (M)
Paint Bucket Tool (K)
Eyedropper Tool (I)
Eraser Tool (E)
Hand Tool (H)
Zoom Tool (Z)
Stroke Color Figure 1-31: Choose a stroke color and style. Figure 1-32: Apply them using the Ink Bottle tool.
Fill Color Lesson 1: Flash CS6 Jumpstart 29
Black and White
Swap Colors
Snap to Objects
Smooth
Straighten Software Orientations
Figure 1-8: The Tools panel.
14 Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6
Lesson 9
Controlling Movie Clip Timelines
Controlling Movie Clip Timelines
Step-by-Step Follow these steps to control Movie Clip Timelines
1. Open the Actions panel by choosing Window > Actions from the main menu. Click
on frame 42 of the Actions layer to make sure you’re adding actions to this frame. The
gotoAndStop( ) action you added in the last section should still be hanging around here.
You may remember from the fi nished fi le that this animation will feature an intense and
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2. Press the Delete the selected action(s) button twice to clear out the actions panel. Now
click the Add a new item to the script button and choose fl ash.display > MovieClip >
Methods > stop. Hopefully this enigmatic menu is getting a bit more familiar at this point.
You’ll use it pretty frequently.
3. Type this in the Object text fi eld. The Actions panel should look like Figure 9-13 below
when complete. Close the Actions panels when you are done.
Figure 9-13: Swap out the gotoAndStop( ) action for a stop( ) action.
4. You may not have noticed, but the bird and cat are twitching and blinking respectively
throughout the movie. It may be nice to hold off these movements until the bird has
alighted atop the cat. You can stop and play the bird and cat Eye timelines the same way
you stop and play the main timeline. But fi rst you’ll need a way to refer to each of these
objects.
5. Using the Selection tool (), click on the bird Movie Clip on the Stage as shown in
Figure 9-14. Click on the Properties tab to make sure the Property Inspector is accessible.
Take Note Take Note...
The Actions panel often interferes with your access of objects on the Stage. Refer to Lesson 7
for tips on managing your workspace. Most Flash users who rely heavily on scripting create
custom workspaces to help manage this sometimes cumbersome panel.
294 Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6
viii Introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS6