How to Learn Flash

How to Learn Flash, now available on Amazon, is a series of Flash tutorials for beginners that walks you through the basic production pipeline of creating Flash projects without making you pull your hair out. We are realeasing these on Amazon Kindle. In this first exercise, Simple Interactive Pencil, you will create a basic project: a pencil that when clicked, draws a straight line.

This first project in the series, though very simple in appearance, shows the basic elements that are needed to build interactive projects in Flash: drawing, creating and naming layers, creating symbols, button states, importing images & sound, motion & shape tweens, animation, and Actionscript (Flash’s computer language).

I have had over 10 years of experience in teaching and using Flash, and I wanted to create a series of tutorials for all of those who were curious about learning flash, but weren’t quite sure what was involved. This series of lessons has been adapted from classes I have taught to beginners who were just learning flash.

We at tonyteach believe that learning flash, or anything for that matter, shouldn’t be difficult or expensive, and our goal is to pack as many tips, tricks, and techniques into a single, simple, cost-effective project.

With that in mind, the How to Learn Flash series is designed for a skill level of novice to beginner. This first project, Simple Interactive Pencil, should take between 30 minutes to an hour to complete.

Available Now on Amazon Kindle & Kindle Apps: http://amzn.com/B0064BCA8O

Hey Campers, here is a look at the first commercial that one of my brainchildren, STUDIO 11D12, is doing for local cable in Atlanta.

writing, directing, & animation: Tony Ross

character design & animation: Lamont Russ

All Voices : Demarcus Hill

Here is a basic Flash tutorial to animate cartoon eyes w/ a blink. This tutorial uses Graphic symbols set to Single Frame. I’m using CS4, but this technique is doable in earlier versions of Flash as well, (even before any CS version).
19 minutes/54.5MB… be patient while loading

click here to order & download an HD version of this tutorial, ONLY $2!

Show some love, retweet this tutorial by clicking here

Here is a video tutorial on how to create a simple drop menu in Flash. Subjects covered are button states, invisible buttons, movieclips, and Actionscript 3.
18:16 minutes/40.8MB… be patient while loading

I get a lot of questions on how I have my Flash workspace set up. Well, it’s customized. Here is a short beginners tutorial to show you how you can customize your own workspace.
You can also follow these steps for Photoshop and Illustrator CS4.

I want to take a moment to explain the idea behind my new online classes at eduFire.com.

I have 10+ years teaching experience, and two of my specialties are:
1. developing ways of delivering a lot of information in a short time period, and
2. putting forth that information in a way that the novice does not feel overwhelmed.

An example of this is in my Flash animation class, though this is an intro class, students are doing their first animation within the first 30 minutes of class.

I have been teaching, at a local university, a few Community Education (CE) courses on Flash over the past 5 years. The courses are 16 hrs long, broken up over two consecutive weekends. I was looking for a way to build a modular teaching series.

I have always been interested in teaching online, and then I came across the eduFire community. I like eduFire because, like the CE courses, I am free to develop classes of my own design. This is especially helpful as most of my class topics & tutorials are based on students requests and questions. I also love the fact that unlike the CE courses I teach, you don’t have to live near Atlanta to attend them. In my last eduFire class, I had students ranging from California to Cairo!

So, what has developed from this are my new 2-hour mini-classes. Designed to be modular, short and to the point. They are broken up into two groups:

the “I Wanna Learn” Series: intro courses for the beginner to get their feet wet (these classes are always FREE)

and the “Simple and Perfect” Series (these courses are intermediate level, and are normally $49).

Here is a listing of my eduFire classes for August 09, and if you haven’t done so already, please fill out my short survey, as this information helps me to design better classes and tutorials.

I Wanna Learn Flash: Interactive Intro,
*FREE* : Saturday, Aug. 1, 12pm – 2pm EDT

Simple & Perfect : Banners and Ads in Flash,
*$49* : Sunday, Aug. 2, 12pm – 2pm EDT

I Wanna Learn Flash: Animation intro,
*FREE* : Saturday, Aug. 8, 12pm – 2pm EDT

Simple & Perfect: Animating a short in Flash,
*$49* : Sunday, Aug. 9, 12pm – 2pm EDT

Simple & Perfect: Flash AS: Five scripts you should know,
*$19* : Aug. 22, 12pm – 2pm EDT

If you haven’t done so already, please fill out my short survey, as this information helps me to design better classes and tutorials.

Thanks for reading all this (I tried to keep it short), and I look forward to seeing you all in class!

Tony Ross

So after viewing my tutorial, Build A Basic Site Using AS3 in Flash, over on Creative COW, Tom Whaley had the following to ask:
I’m making an interactive color chart that has a square inside a square. I want to be able to change the color of both squares individually. How can I change them separately?

Well Tom, this tut’s for you, NOW w/ cleaner AS3! (well, at least different) enjoy – Tony