Take your graphics skills to a whole new level by adding Flash to your designer toolkit! In this course, you’ll learn how to create animated, interactive movies in Adobe Flash CS5.  

These days, Flash movies are everywhere—including the Internet, films, TV shows and commercials, and computer games. The skills you’ll learn in this course will get you started on your way to a lucrative career designing animated graphics and special effects for one of these fun and exciting fields. 

During this course, you’ll create a full-blown Flash application, complete with animated text and graphics and interactive buttons. You’ll start by exploring the Flash workspace, creating text and graphics, and animating objects on the Flash movie stage. Next, you’ll look in detail at the anatomy of a Flash movie—how to use the Flash timeline, layers, and frames to control objects and timing on the stage. 

While you can create an entire movie in Flash, most often you’ll need to import graphics, sounds, and digital videos from other applications. While creating your first Flash movie, you’ll learn how to format and embed external digital media and how to make them appear or play at specific times. You’ll also learn how to control digital media based on specific events, such as end user mouse clicks. 

Because no course on Flash is complete without an introduction to ActionScript, Flash’s powerful programming language, you’ll create interactive buttons with ActionScript 3.0. You’ll also learn to write scripts that control movie flow and scripts that call to and load external videos, Web pages, and other Flash movie files.

As you create your movie, you’ll find out how to design and animate 3-D objects, sync sounds with animations, and publish your Flash movies to the Internet. By the end of the course, you’ll know how to create and publish Flash movies and applications, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a Flash designer.

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Adobe Flash Pro CS5 Windows or Adobe Flash Pro Mac or Adobe Flash Pro CS5 Windows Upgrade or Adobe Flash Pro Mac Upgrade or any Adobe Creative Suite bundle containing Adobe Flash CS5 is acceptable (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); student discounts are available through specific schools; Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (the upgrade version will run on Windows XP), or Mac OS 10.x; Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). Artistic ability is not required—just a desire to be creative.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be William Harrel.

As owner and operator of The Write Desktop Publisher for more than 20 years, William Harrel has been involved in designing Web and print media on computers since the early days of desktop publishing. In addition to running his own design firm, he is the author or coauthor of 19 books on designing print media, animation, and electronic documents—including titles on Photoshop, Acrobat (Acrobat for Dummies), PageMaker, and Flash. He is also the author of hundreds of magazine articles, ranging from Web and multimedia how-to’s to software reviews. His articles have appeared in PC World, Home Office Computing, Compute, Windows Magazine, Publish, Entrepreneur, Home Office, and many other magazines. He has taught Web design and graphics design applications at Cal State Northridge and other schools.

“ This course was more intense than I had anticipated but rewarding beyond measure! I believe it has provided a solid foundation for using Flash. Thank you. ”

“ Good job by an accomplished instructor with good insight into what helps students learn the material. Style was comfortable and relaxed. Good "tone." ”

“ This is my first online course and I would recommend it. I will be taking other courses with you, I have friends that have paid so much more and have gotten less out of their courses, Thanks! ”

“ I've enjoyed this introduction to Flash tremendously and appreciate how effectively you communicate each lesson. ”

“ I thoroughly enjoyed this course and wish to take the intermediate Flash CS5 course. ”

“ This is my first online class and the first schooling I have had in almost 20 years. I really enjoyed this course. ”

“ I was very impressed by the enthusiasm, knowledge, willingness to help and character of the instructor. ”

“ I wanted to tell you how much I've learned from your class. I will be signing up for the advanced class. This has been a wonderful class. ”

“ I found this course to be far superior to material published by Adobe, especially the Adobe video series (which by comparison seemed haphazard and poorly organized.) This course presents an organized, "start to finish" approach using a typical example of a Flash project which illustrates all the basic and essential capabilities of Flash. I also appreciated the author's comments which often give a back story or historical context as to why a particular feature developed in a particular way, or why it acts the way it does. I would highly recommend this class to anyone as an introduction to the subject. ”

“ This course was very well organized and planned. I really liked the additional assignments as a way to practice the new skills learned from completing the projects. ”