BOSTON-DAY 1

Well- this trip, in keeping with trips past, began with severe digestion problems, ten minutes outside of NYC. I shan’t go into details, but suffice it to say that I’m switching to breakfasts that fewer sharp edges.

The trip took every bit as long as I figured it would, although, much to my pleasant surprise, the train wasn’t nearly as crowded as some folks warned me it would be. Read the rest of this entry »

New details regarding this video have come to my attention, via a number of visitors, as well as a few people serving in Iraq alongside the young marine featured during the latter half of the film.

Now- I will stand by what I said about the first half of the video- we do see that this Iraqi Insurgent is plainly injured, crawling AWAY from the source of fire. Read the rest of this entry »

Allrighty. Right-click on the following image, and select “save picture as.” Browse to your desktop, and save the file under any name you want.

Go to Photoshop, and select “File>Open”, and open up the picture you just saved to your desktop- and there it is, within your photoshop framework:

Now- pay close attention: For your flash animations, a full-screen image needs only to be 320X240 pixels. Read the rest of this entry »

CHAPTER FIVE- A QUICK STEP BACK

Okay- so now you know a bit about your tools, and how to create some simple animation. It’s time to take a quick step back, and learn how to change the basic properties of your movie. Read the rest of this entry »

CHAPTER FOUR: AN INTRODUCTION TO KEYFRAMES AND TWEENS

Now that you (hopefully) understand your tools, it’s time to move on to more interesting stuff.

Open up flash, and make sure you have the Library Library, Color Mixer, and Align panels open (you can use the keyboard shortcuts mentioned in the previous chapter, or click on the “windows” tab at the top of your screen.)

Take a look up at your timeline- for now, it consists of one layer, and one keyframe (the little box with the “o” inside of it.)

Use your brush tool to draw out a squiggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s get right to it- press the “B” key to use the brush tool. In your stage area- draw out a squiggle:

Press the “V” key. Click on your squiggle- you’ll notice that it becomes a bit “grayed out.” In flash, this discoloration is a visual signal that lets the user know that a vector shape has been selected. Read the rest of this entry »