Learning Face to Face... Initial Request ?

[Dahfish]

Bit of a different one this, if not a little unusual.

Basically I thought it might be a good idea to find someone to help the motivation re-appear. I have been working in Graphics (self-taught) for over 5 years now. I am in fulltime employment doing a kind of graphics ahem, but am looking to move to web design. I have taught myself HTML, CSS, Javascript(fundements) over the past few years and now I am looking into FLASH 5. I know Adobe Photoshop like the back of my hand and I lurve it ;) (V 5.5 atm) plus a few other packages.

I am finding learning Flash nothing short of frustrating. I can picture what I want it to do, think I have it sorted in my mind, then get stuck on the little things and get annoyed <-- not used to that with my other packages :) Really it's because I'm new to flash therefore it hasn't clicked yet.

I was wondering if there is anyone who can help me learn (short of reading). Books can't answer or explain questions along the way and I'm finding it a drag - mainly because I spend the day at work, get home and the last thing I wanna do is work some more albeit on something I enjoy.

I live in the South of England Nr Guildford - I'm on ICQ / mIRC etc: (can't for the life of me remember my no.) anyway, brainstorm away :)

Cheers

DahFish.

P.S. Ok Ok I admit it... I do find Quake2 a SLIGHT, only slight mind - distraction too, but hey life's too short damn it ;) and just because Quake2.exe is in my startup menu doesn't mean a thing!

[Edited by Dahfish on 20-09-2000 at 02:57 PM]

[Vampire]

You can start posting your questions here, and search for tuts.

No??

[Karve]

Check http://www.flashkit.com ..... it has all you need there and the tutorials are very good

[Dahfish]

Cheers for the tuts site it does look useful - I shall have a go tonight ;)

My main problem at the moment is with the drawing tools. They are driving me up the wall grr. Flash 5 was announced as having the pen tool showing the node handles for curves for accurate manipulation for those who are already farmiliar using professional packages. Well they don't quite work like that, I end up with 37 additional nodes being added and get frustrated with having to switch between the pen tool (P) and the sub-selection arrow (V or A can't remember now). So I thought I would draw a simple outline shape with some semi-trasp bars for text to overlay, nngghhh ROFLMAO, well needless to say, Quake2 loaded up lol!!!

It will click one day, everyone goes through the same things.

Cheers and I'll keep you informed ;)

DahFish.

[Dahfish]

howdy again,

well as you can tell I'm at home now and have tried a touch of Flash, and... and... well I'm here again :(

Question:
Motion Tweening along a path, with orient to path on.

I can get a single object to follow a path on the guide layer above it, no probs there. The problem comes when I want to tween several objects (not along the same path) at the same time. Now only 1 will tween along the path, the other likes to appear in the first and last frame only. Do I need to create the tweens for each object on a seperate layer with a seperate guide layer for each?

The effect I'm trying to reproduce that I have seen (just to learn) is a word, broken into each letter almost exploding and dropping downwards.

Cheers

DahFish <--- Q2 too laggy atm :(

[dran]

DahFish,

Do you have all of the instances of objects that you want to move on different layers on the timeline. Basically you can only move, tween or generally mess about with one item at a time per layer. If you have 2 items per layer, one of them will not work.

Thats my first thought to solve the problem.

[Vampire]

think you're right dran. ;)

[Dahfish]

That makes sense and explains my thoughts. It does mean that you end up with a fair amount of layers if you wanted to explode some text using motion paths. At least 1 layer per letter plus the extra layers for the guide paths.

I have downloaded a few of the tutorial demonstration .fla files and will have a crack at the weekend.

Thanks and no doubt I will be posting again ;)

Cheers

DahFish.

[BuzzinHornet]

If you want to make text effects in flash like explodnig text and other cool stuf, I suggest you try Swish.

All you do is type your text pick the colour, font and size then pick the effect and choose where on the timeline you want it..Voila!

Then just import it into flash on a new layer, saves you doing each letter and worring about it lining up etc.

get a demo from www.swishzone.com The full versions only about 20 quid so its well worth its money. I think the new version also allows you to add images :)

[Dahfish]

Hehe Cheers Buzzin...

Isn't that cheating? *grins*

I shall have a look after work then give it a whirl ;)

I tried downloading the 30 day trial at work to install here... urrr we have a 64k ISDN line permenantly on (leased not dial-up) and I was getting a transfer rate of...wait for it:

7b/sec

yes 7 bytes not KB!!! estimated time to completion: 917hrs.

I left it giong for half and hour hoping it would pick up :)

I cancelled it an hour later having recieved 6KB of 18MB lol!

nm I downloaded it at home at 4.5KB/Sec 56K modem style... Toast onto a CD at the weekend then I shall bring it in. Hopefully I shall get to grips with it faster soon ;)

Cheers

DahFish.

[Dahfish]

Howdy again,

quick gripe this one...

I have found out what most of the problems with the drawing tools (pen and sub-selection tools) are. Basically the Flash tutorials for the pen and subselection tools are way off the mark, they don't actually work the way they have said. The help however tells you exactly how they DO work, so at least I have sorted most of it out.

The only thing that I can't seem to find the method for doing is moving multiple selected nodes. The tutorial would have you believe (and quite rightly so for most other packages - CorelDraw & Photoshop etc:) that all you have to do is to select the desired nodes using the subselection tool (click-drag / Shift-click) and then simply click on any single selected node and move them... What happens? that single node moves, or if you click and drag part of the path, the whole thing moves... Any ideas? and any ideas why the Flash tutorials are wrong?

Cheers

DahFish.