Introduction

Assignment

February is Black History Month. To honor of the month, you will create an original Web-ready animation that advertises a Black History Month event. You must seek out and determine what events are being held in the Twin Cities and/or St. Cloud area area, and learn as much about the event as possible. Then create an ad in Flash showcasing the event.

Procedure

1. Find a Black History Month related event that is taking place this coming February. Try checking museum, college, government and public library Web sites. For example, check out the Minnesota History Center site or the Dakota County Library site. Of course, you're not limited to these, in fact I'd prefer if you could find an event that is taking place locally.
2. Come up with a concept for you ad. The ad must contain some animation, and of course text—telling the viewer what the event is, where, when, etc.
3. Ask yourself, how are the various elements going to animate? Items can move left & right, up and down, or all over; they can spin, change size, fade in and out, and change color. With shape tweens they can even morph into new shapes. You can (and probably should) animate the text of the ad too.
4. Launch Flash. In the start-up window choose the Advertising template, and then the 300 x 250 medium rectangle.
5. You can create art and graphics in Flash or import images from other sources (bitmaps from Photoshop, vectors from Illustrator, etc.).
6. Animate the objects & text using tweens. You can use shape, classic, or motion tweens, or some combination there of. Remember to put every object that moves/changes on its own layer.
7. The challenge is to make the finished SWF as lightweight as possible. Can you stay under 100k?

Hints

• Make sure the text is large enough to be legible.
• Make sure the text is on screen long enough to be read.
• Keep your animations short, simple, and eye-catching.
• Often the last frame stays "frozen" at the end of the animation, so it's a good idea to have the what-where-when information in the last frame.

Specifications:

• Size: 300 x 250 (standard medium rectangle ad)
• Frame Rate: 24 fps
• Length: appx 7–20 seconds
• Due Date: Week 5
• Deliverables: both the FLA and exported SWF files.