The main skill everyone really wanted to have a grounding in (however basic) was the use of Flash.  Christine really inspired this with her talk about her work and the demonstrations she gave.  The skills exchange really focused on this, with us all coming up close for a chat through what flash can do and ask questions of Christine.

 

The basic principles we covered were: the use of layers, file sizes (using vector images vs using jpegs), key frames, motion tweens, creating symbols (which can then be animated), buttons, previewing information about the flash project and how to publish them.  We debating pre-loaders and Christine magically obliged Chris in his request to make a green ball “bounce around”.

 

Christine explained how the programme is based on older animation techniques and demonstrated some of the simple (but effective) things one can do with flash.  This was inspiring for those who were really daunted by Flash and felt this was something they should be doing in their work.  However, the overall content of the day actually showed the new students that they do not have to do everything – Claudia in particular noted this whilst we were making cups of tea.  There is such a wide range of tools available, but as writers we need to choose the tools that will facilitate what we want to create.   There was also the general realisation that many of these programmes overlap, so whilst many people were panicking about learning new programmes, they could actually achieve things using programmes with which they were already familiar.

 

Christine’s main tip for those wanting to progress further beyond this session was to visit the W3Schools, as the tutorials offered on this site are free and quite user-friendly.