Flash Tutorials

In this class so far we have mostly used Photoshop and After Effects, but despite the fact that we talk about Flash, we have never actually used the program or learned how to use it. Well I decided that I was quite curious how it different from After Effects especially after watching Becca's intro project. After doing a bit of research I found a few basic tutorials that can help understand Flash and how to use it.

The first one that I found is called Entheos.  It provides different tutorials on animation and effects concentrating on a specific effects in each sample. It also provides tutorials on Action Script and other miscellaneous effects. Plus, just in case you feel like learning more, Entheos provides other Flash Resources and articles. Entheos also provides tutorials for Photoshop (since the two programs go hand-in-hand) which are also really helpful and provide some really awesome designs and ideas, as well as Dreamweaver and a few other programs.

After watching the simple animation tutorial I found that Flash reminds me of a mix of Photoshop and After Effects. The layout of Flash CS5 resembles the layout of Photoshop CS5 but it obviously has the controls of After Effects. Personally, this made me feel far less intimidated with the program because I am far more familiar with the controls than I would have expected.

Another site that gives you tutorials on pretty much anything you need is Toxiclab.org. It allows you to research whichever program you want and then provides you with different examples and articles to help you. Flash, Illustrator, and Photoshop are among the programs you can learn.

Finally there is Tutorialized which provides a ton of tutorials for graphics in Maya, Illustrator, Photoshop, and of course, Flash.


I hope people take advantage of these because, while they are basic, I found that the tutorials provided a really good foundation for learning Flash, as well as Photoshop. Since we have been concentrating on After Effects so much in class I figured these can give us the basics of Motion Graphics in another outlet. Good luck to all, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.