Video Training Review: Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training with Rich Shupe from Lynda.com

When people want to develop professional animation, design interactive websites, or incorporate audio and video into self-contained presentations most turn to Adobe Flash to get professional results. In this training session you will learn how to get a handle on the fundamentals of using the latest version of the product; Flash CS3.

Your trainer for this library is Rich Shupe. Rich Shupe is the founder and president of FMA — a full-service multimedia development company and training facility in New York City. Rich teaches Flash and other digital technologies, in academic and commercial environments worldwide, and is a professor at New York's School of Visual Arts in the MFA computer art program. This library is divided into 15 lessons and runs 8 hours.

Lesson 1, "Getting Started" examines how to create a new document, how to customize your workspace, how to reorganize panels, and save it for future use. You will learn how to work with the document tabs and how to find help when you need it. Lesson 2, "Drawing Essentials" teaches you the basics of drawing and working with the pencil, pen and line tools. You will also work with the Quick Color tools, draw with shapes, paint with brushes, and learn to understand the drawing modes.

Lesson 3, "Color Essentials" exposes you to the Color Mixer, the Gradient Transform tool, and working with color swatches. Lesson 4, "Symbols Essentials" begins by giving an overview of what symbols are, how to create and edit them, how to nest and break them apart as well as how to work with buttons, movie clips, graphics, and the library.

Lesson 5, "Timeline Essentials" introduces you to adding, deleting, and grouping layers. Showing you what a frame and keyframe are, and how to work with them to provide animation. Lesson 6, "Testing and Publishing Your Files" will show you how to test your documents as well as get you to understand how the document settings work.

Lesson 7, "Image Essentials" describes the difference between vector and bitmap images, how to import images and the effect that compression has on them. You will also learn how to import both Photoshop and Illustrator files. Lesson 8, "Animation Essentials" explains shape tweening, using shape hints, and other tweening techniques. You will see how to copy and paste motion and work with motion guides.

Lesson 9, "Text Essentials" explores the different text types, how to control text appearance, creating simple text effects through tweening, and how to add text to a project file. Lesson 10, "Using Filters and Blend Modes" describes how, by using Flash's bitmap compositing capabilities, you can use filters and blend modes to create eye catching graphic effects.

Lesson 11, "Using Components" gives you an overview of components and how they allow you to add interactive functionality to your project while requiring little to no ActionScript. You will see how to add a UIScrollBar component as well as a loader component to a project. Lesson 12, "Sound Essentials" will show you how to add sound to a timeline, add basic effects to sound, how the sound sync options work, and show you the basics of sound compression.

Lesson 13, "Video Essentials" explains the differences between embedded and external video, how to embed videos with the Flash Video Encoder, how to encode external FLVs with optional cue points, and how to play external videos with the FLVPlayback component. Lesson 14, "Introduction to ActionScript" give an overview of the ActionScript interface; the Actions Panel, variable basics, function basics, and how to script components. Lesson 15, "Putting it All Together" finishes up by tidying up some loose ends and finally how to publish your site.

Rich Shupe does a really great job of presenting the information in Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training. He steps you through each item explaining it in clear and easy to understand terms. He covers sound, colors, buttons, movie clips, motion attributes such as position, rotation, scale, and alpha. He covers copying and pasting motion.

You can get Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training two ways. One is as a DVD training package Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training and the other is part of the online training experience at Lynda.com. The DVD Training Package is $149.00 USD and contains everything you need.

The online training Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training comes in three flavors. Monthly at $25 USD/month gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually at $250 USD per year or Premium at $375 USD per year which get all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included on the DVD and Premium subscriptions.

You can use Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training as a training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding Flash CS3. You can also try out most of the first two lessons for free at Lynda.com.

Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training Lesson Listing:

    Introduction
1. Getting Started
2. Drawing Essentials
3. Color Essentials
4. Symbols Essentials
5. Timeline Essentials
6. Testing and Publishing Your Files
7. Image Essentials
8. Animation Essentials
9. Text Essentials
10. Using Filters and Blend Modes
11. Using Components
12. Sound Essentials
13. Video Essentials
14. Introduction to ActionScript
15. Putting it All Together
     Conclusion