Adobe Flash is a popular authoring application for bringing motion, sound, and interactivity to the Web. Flash began as an animation program, and it's still used for creating professional-quality animated cartoons for broadcast and DVD. This course focuses entirely on Flash's animation capabilities. You'll learn how to create attractive vector drawings, set them in motion using a variety of techniques, and synchronize them with music and spoken dialogue. You'll also get experience with the non-Flash aspects of animation development: storyboarding, creating characters, and putting together a soundtrack.
In order to store and transport the files you'll be creating in this course, you must buy a USB flash drive (sometimes known as a "stick drive" or "thumb drive"), and bring it with you to every class. You can buy these drives online, at the Chabot bookstore, or at nearly any computer store or office supply store.
There are two required textbooks for this course:
Both of these books are available either as a standard paperback or a less-expensive Kindle edition from Amazon: www.amazon.com/How-Cheat-Adobe-Flash-ebook/dp/B004EYSP96 and www.amazon.com/Adobe-Flash-Professional-Demand-ebook/dp/B003NURH2I. If you don't have a Kindle, you can read the Kindle edition on an iPhone, iPod touch, and other device by means of a free downloadable app: www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/kcp, or you can read it in any web browser by going to the Kindle Cloud Reader at read.amazon.com.
Points will not be deducted from your score for unexcused absences. However, if you have an excessive number of unexcused absences, the instructor may drop you from the course. If the last of the unexcused absences occurs after the deadline for withdrawal (see "Last day to drop with W" under "Important dates" at the end of this syllabus), you will fail the course.
An absence may excused if it is for an unavoidable reason (such as illness or family emergency) and you notify the instructor of the reason before or immediately after the absence.
An "excessive number of unexcused absences" is defined as any of the following:
The instructor is under no obligation to help you catch up on material that you missed due to an unexcused absence.
An attendance sheet will be passed around during each class period; please be sure to sign it. Failure to sign may result in an unexcused absence being charged against you.
You are not required to buy Flash software for this course. In order to complete your homework assignments, you're welcome to come to open lab hours and use the Flash software that's installed on Chabot's computers. (See "Lab hours," below.) However, if you own a computer, buying the software will give you the convenience of being able to work on your assignments at home. If you plan to use other Adobe applications besides Flash, consider buying a "bundle" such as Adobe CS5.5 Web Standard, which contains Flash and several other Adobe applications in one discounted package.
If you decide to buy the software, your status as a student entitles you to buy the educational version. The educational version of Adobe software is just the same as the commercial version, but it's much less expensive. You can get your software at the lowest possible prices from either of the following websites:
These two sites offer Adobe software at a lower price than you'll find anywhere else, exclusively for California community college students.
The software we'll be using in this course is Adobe Flash Professional CS5. (Adobe has since come out with an interim version called CS5.5, but this has not been installed on Chabot's computers.) If you have Flash CS4 or CS5.5 on your home or office computer, it's okay to use those versions for your homework assignments. Versions older than CS4 are not compatible with the type of animation we'll be doing and therefore can't be used for this course.
Flash is a cross-platform application; therefore, even if your home computer is a Windows PC, you can move files back and forth between your PC at home and the Macintosh computers used in the classroom.
As long as you're enrolled in this course, you're entitled to use Chabot's computers to do course-related work outside of class hours. Until further notice, open lab hours in building 900 are as follows:
The labs are available only to students who are currently enrolled in Digital Media or Music Recording and Technology classes, and only for work on course-related projects.
There will be no quizzes or exams in this course. Your entire grade will be based on your homework assignments. There will be a total of seven assignments, in which you'll be asked to create or edit different types of animations in Flash. When you finish the course, these assignments will constitute a portfolio, a collection of work that demonstrates your ability.
Each assignment that you hand in may be projected on the screen as a teaching example or distributed to students as part of an in-class exercise, in your class or in other classes. If there's a particular assignment that you don't want to be used in this way, please say so in the documentation file that accompanies the assignment. (See "Documenting your work," below.)
There will be two kinds of requirements for each homework assignment: content and skills. The content requirements have to do with the purpose and style of your Flash projects. The skills requirements have to do with specific features of Flash that you'll use in creating the projects. The content and skill requirements will be explained by the instructor in class and given to you in writing (online). Be sure to fulfill all the requirements in order to get full credit for each assignment.
Sometimes, your homework assignments will contain elements (such as photographs or sounds) that were not created in Flash, or were created by someone other than you. In those cases, you must list the source of each such element in a separate file called a documentation file. If a photograph is your own, say so; if it's an image you scanned from a book, give the title, author, and page number of the book; if you copied a sound from a CD, identify the CD; if you downloaded the sound from a website, give the URL of the website. This information is called documentation. Think of it as a bibliography, similar to what you would include in a term paper.
Keep in mind that other people's work is their own property, and you don't have the right to incorporate it into your own work unless you have their permission. (In some cases, getting that permission may require paying a fee.) There are websites and CDs that offer free photos and sounds for noncommercial use. You're free to use such elements in your assignments, as long as your documentation lists the source of each element and explains why you have the right to use it. (For example, your documentation might say "I downloaded sound X from www.flashkit.com, whose sounds are free for noncommercial use," or "I paid a licensing fee to gettyimages.com for the right to use Image X.") If your documentation file does not include this information, or if the information is inaccurate, your assignment may not be accepted.
Your documentation file may be in plain text format (for example, a file created in SimpleText or Windows NotePad), or it may be a Microsoft Word document. Other word-processing formats are not acceptable. (It's fine to create your documentation file in a different word-processing program, so long as you save it as a text-only file, a Rich Text Format [RTF] file, or a Microsoft Word [DOC or DOCX] file.)
At the end of the course, all students will have an opportunity to get up in front of the class and present their completed animations. Please be prepared to talk about your animation -- what it represents, what your intentions were, and how you achieved them. The instructor may also ask you questions about your animation. The quality of your presentation, including your ability to answer questions, will count toward your final grade.
Your grade for the course will be based on a 100-point scale. Depending on how many points you have at the end of the course, you'll receive a letter grade as follows:
Here's what we'll be covering each week. (This outline may change according to the needs of the class.) Textbooks are identified by their author's initials -- CG for Chris Georgenes; SJ for Steve Johnson.
If you have questions or concerns about anything in this course, feel free to do any of the following:
If you wish to drop the course, it is your responsibility to submit a withdrawal to the Admissions and Records Office. If you stop attending class, the instructor may choose to drop you from the roster, but you should not rely on the instructor to do so.
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability or illness, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please let the instructor know as soon as possible.
All standard College policies (including, but not limited to, those pertaining to classroom behavior, attendance, plagiarism, discipline, and homework) will apply to this course.