Flash: Multimedia Greeting Card

Today we're going to be making a "Multimedia Greeting Card" in Adobe Flash.  The idea is that we will have a scene playing with a button that will take readers to the next scene.  When they click and open the next scene, there will be a button to close the card (and return to the main scene).

Requirements:

• Custom Mouse Pointer
• Card Cover (stops for button click)
• Card Inside (stops for button click)
• Buttons that change on "mouseover"
• Some sort of animated element (i.e. a movie clip that plays on one of the pages)

There are a couple codes that you can use for this:

Stop Button:

stop();

Button Code:

on(release){
 gotoAndPlay('Wherever');
}

Mouse Pointer Code:

onClipEvent (load) {
Mouse.hide();
startDrag(this, true);
}
onClipEvent(mouseMove){
updateAfterEvent();
}

We will be working on this project this week.

The following is an example of the "Multimedia Greeting Card":

Flash: Eyes That Follow the Mouse

Today we are going to be drawing an eye (facing left), converting it to a movie clip, dragging an instance to the desktop, naming your instances, adding some ActionScript, and testing it.  The result?  Eyes that follow the mouse pointer, obviously.  :)

• Create a Flash ActionScript 2.0 file.
• Create three layers (Actions, Eyes, and Content).
• Add the following ActionScript to Frame 1 of the Actions layer:

a = eye1._y-_ymouse;
b = eye1._x-_xmouse;
angleA = Math.atan2(a, b);
degrees = angleA/(Math.PI/180);
setProperty("eye1", _rotation, degrees);

a2 = eye2._y-_ymouse;
b2 = eye2._x-_xmouse;
angleA2 = Math.atan2(a2, b2);
degrees2 = angleA2/(Math.PI/180);
setProperty("eye2", _rotation, degrees2);

• Click on Frame 1 of the "Eyes" layer
• Draw a large circle (usually a black line and a white fill) [holding shift while dragging the circle helps it stay circular]
• Draw a smaller circle on the inside-left of the larger circle (about 9:00) which will serve as the pupil
• Select the entire eye [you can drag around the eyeball or click CTRL+A]
• Go to MODIFY > CONVERT TO SYMBOL
• Select "Movie clip" and call the clip something like "eyeball".
• Drag the eyeball over so that the "+" is directly in the center
• Go back to "Scene 1"
• Press "Delete" to remove the eyeball from the Stage
• Drag two "instances" of the "eyeball" on to the stage [a left and right eye]
• Click on the left eye and give it the "instance name" of "eye1"
• Click on the right eye and give it the "instance name" of "eye2"
•  Test your movie (CTRL+ENTER) -- the eyes should "look at" your mouse pointer.
• Add a background picture and resize the eyes accordingly to fit.
• Optionally you can add a custom mouse pointer to give the eyes something interesting to look at.

Below is a Video Tutorial which doesn't follow our project exactly, but should help explain the process:

Additional Photoshop Functions

Today we will be looking at some different Photoshop functions:

• Brushes
• Actions

We will also be creating some folders in your Thawspace:

•  Resources
• Fonts
• Brushes
• Actions
• Stock Images

Today we will begin experimenting with Photoshop Actions.  Actions are basically macros -- small scripts that do a series of tasks that you would normally need to perform one at a time.

Update: We viewed available Actions, found how to use "hidden" Actions, and how to load external Actions.  We experimented with a few Actions on images and text.

[Note to Self: Update later with examples, links, etc.]