The Cannon Project
This is by far my students favorite assignment of the semester. It is a chance for them to get completely creative and crazy while practicing their drawing, animation and action script skills. I make it into a competition for extra credit so students are very motivated to win.
Directions (pdf) | Examples: 2007 | 2008
Animation Plan (pdf) | Symbol Planning Sheet (pdf) | Flash Storyboard (pdf)
Cannon Project
This project is designed to practice creating buttons and using action script to control the viewers placement on the timeline. Your mission is to create a simple animated site that allows the user to fire and reload their cannon.
I have created six tutorials to show you the steps I used to create a project. Feel free to be creative. These are only to give you the basics. Try to make your project unique. We will vote for prizes at the end.
Tutorials
Part1 (4:50)
In this part I show you some examples and talk about the pre-production tools you will be using.
Part2 (7:29)
In this part I cover how to setup the new layers.
Part3 (6:16)
In this part I cover how to create the frame labels and add sound.
Part4 (9:24)
In this part I cover how to add your actions and buttons.
Part5 (7:03)
In this part I cover how to animate the project.
Part6 (2:12)
In this part I cover how to mask the artwork.
Actions
You should use frame actions (stop) and button actions (gotoAndPlay). Use frame labels so that you can control the speed of your animations.
goToAndPlay Assignment: Tutorial (3:48) | Template (fla) | Example (swf)