Silhouette Animations

Obviously animating in silhouette is the general theme of this lesson, but the unique thing about this course is the broad range of techniques covered, many of which are so rarely used they haven't found their way into CartoonSmart's other Flash animation courses.

Here's an example, because we're working in silhouette we can "cheat" a little and leave out those fussy inside details of an object and just capture the movement of the exterior. Imagine turning a Rubix cube, NOT in silhouette: you've got tons of connecting perspective lines within the object and on every frame you'd have to adjust each line in perspective to make a smooth, realistic turn. But in silhouette, turning that same cube is relatively simple. This gives us z-axis-deficient Flash animators a way to fake a 3-dimensional turn of an object and the end effect is a smooth motion in silhouette with the illusion of depth. That sounds simple, but of course the inner workings in Flash might be a combination of twenty layers of tweened objects (like this)

The nail-biter is this: Suppose you are motion-tweening twenty-odd layers to make one seemingly singular movement, what if you don't want to use a flat color as the silhouette, but rather multiple JPGs to add texture to the scene. Ah-ha. Now that's not so easy. And thats one of the many things we tackle in the tutorial.

2 Hours of fun await ya... Click here for more details and examples

Drawing API using Actionscript v.3 (or v.2)

This two part lesson covers the Drawing API using both Actionscript 3 (in Flash CS3) and Actionscript 2 (in Flash 8). So what the heck is the Drawing API?!

The Drawing API allows you to create shapes using only code. So don't let the word "Drawing" in the title of this lesson confuse you. The traditional Flash drawing tools are totally off limits. Part one covers the basics of creating shapes (circle, squares, etc) and scripted filters (bevels, blurs, glows, etc). Part two teaches various ways to animate them.

One note about the code: Most of the line-by-line programming and code explanations will be done using Actionscript 3. At the end of each example, we'll look at the same code using Actionscript 2, which is very similar.

Check out the details and super psychedelic examples here... Drawing API Tutorials

Dreamweaver MEGA Course!

Yes, finally a new Dreamweaver course. The other one is now rotting in a shallow grave. Why shallow? Because I know plenty of you still have it, and will dig it up on your hard-drives to re-learn here and there. But remember, things change quick on the ol' internet, and that past course was getting long in the tooth. This new course, recorded in Dreamweaver CS3, covers many of the newest and coolest things about not only Dreamweaver, but also publishing content on the web in general.

Still here? Okay, the Mega Course is 7 hours broken into six parts (themed courses). The usual basics of any Dreamweaver course are covered: layout, text, images, links, embedding Flash, etc. But the really cool stuff centers around using CSS and PHP to add some real style and interactive to your html pages. This includes a plethora of navigation techniques, creating a dynamic image gallery, a PHP client login, randomly different page styles, and a ton more tricks to make your pages less "square".

So whats the catch? Its $40. A meager price to some, a wallet buster to others. But remember, good training is always worth it. And this course will obliterate what most weekend continuing ed. seminars would charge ya....(ahem, lean in for this one...) Those seminars start at around $500! And have no rewind button.

Full details are here... Dreamweaver Mega Course!