Welcome to Adobe Animate CC! Where Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard vector graphics drawing program, Adobe Flash has been the industry standard in rich media production for the past decade. Flash allowed its users to produce everything from basic animations to interactive multimedia experiences, to applications such as games.

However, Flash was not without its drawbacks, from its earliest days it was a known memory hog, and as time progressed its robust built-in programming language developed into a security risk as hackers used the popularity of Flash and the powerful intercommunications between Flash and computer operating systems to introduce malicious commands and malware.

As we enter 2022, the standards have changed. A new web standard called HTML5 has become the common language of web browsers, and poor old Flash had to be left behind in favor of an interactive media application redesigned to meet the HTML5 standard’s requirements. Flash was sunsetted (slowly removed) at the end of 2020 and Adobe Animate has taken its place as the standard for web animation.

Adobe Animate works a lot like Flash, but adds a lot of new features that are only possible in HTML5. We are going to spend the next couple of weeks learning about Adobe Animate, exploring its relationship to Illustrator, and learning how both programs can help you to develop rich interactive multimedia experiences for the web.  

Objectives:

• Identify the elements of the Animate interface, including the Stage, Timeline, Panels and Tool Panel.
• Produce Rectangle, Rectangle Primitive, Oval, Oval Primitive and Polystar shapes, and discuss their properties.
• Explain the difference between Object-Drawn shapes drawn with and Merge-drawn Shapes.
• Explain the difference between Shape Primitives and standard Shapes.

Student Friendly Objectives:

• I can  identify the elements of the Animate interface.
• I can produce shapes using the Animate tools.
• I can explain the difference between a shape drawn with Object Drawing enabled and disabled.
• I can explain the difference between a Shape Primitive and a standard Shape.

Video Links:

Adobe Animate CC
How to Create and Publish an HTML5 Canvas Document 

Topics Discussed:

• Start a new document in Animate CC using the Welcome screen.
• HTML5
• Canvas
• Stage
• Timeline
• Panels
• Tool Panel
• Rectangle Tool
• Rectangle Primitive Tool
• Oval
• Oval Primitive Tool
• Polystar Tool
• Object Drawing

Assignment:

1. Produce a single HTML5 Canvas. Name it “Your Name – Animate Day 1″
2. Edit the properties of the Stage to make a 30fps, 1280 x 720 pixel (HD) stage for animation. Change the color of the stage to any color you like (other than the default white).
3. Use the Shape tools to draw examples of the following shapes:
   1. Rectangle
   2. Rectangle Primitive
   3. Oval
   4. Oval Primitive
   5. Polystar Polygon
   6. Polystar Star
   7. Two overlapping Object drawn shapes (representing the properties of Objects)
   8. Two overlapping Merge drawn shapes, where one shape takes a “bite” out of the other
4. Upload the completed “Your Name – Animate Day 1.fla” file to the “Introduction to Adobe Animate CC” assignment post on the Google Classroom page by the end of the day on Wednesday.

Assigned: March 14th, 2022
Due Date: March 16th, 2022