Introduction to Adobe Animate CC – Spring 2025

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

Adobe Animate works a lot like Flash, but adds a lot of new features that are only possible in HTML5, the current web code standard. 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:
    • Rectangle
    • Rectangle Primitive
    • Oval
    • Oval Primitive
    • Polystar Polygon
    • Polystar Star
    • Two overlapping Object drawn shapes (representing the properties of Objects)
    • 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 17th, 2025
Due Date: March 19th, 2025

Intro to Typography – Typeface Choices 2025 (Hello, My Name Is…)

As a designer, good (or bad) design is all about the choices you make. One of the most important decisions you’ll make is what typefaces you will use to produce your headlines, subheadings and body text.   Strong typeface choices set the appropriate tone for your intended message, while inappropriate typeface choices send conflicting messages and can disrupt the message you intended to communicate.   Today we will practice making strong typeface choices.

Objective:

I can select the most appropriate typeface available for a given design scenario.

Vocabulary Words:

  • Type
  • Typeface
  • Font
  • Serif
  • Sans Serif
  • Script
  • Ornamental/Decorative/Display

Links:

None.

Topics Discussed:

  • Serif Fonts
  • Sans Serif Fonts
  • Script Fonts
  • Ornamental/Decorative/Display Fonts

Assignment:

You’ve seen those “Hello! My Name Is…” badges, right?

2000px-Hello_my_name_is_sticker.svg

They’re pretty generic. They use generic fonts and simple design to make them easy for anybody to recognize and use. What if we could personalize a Hello badge to fit our own personalities? Today, we’re going to use what we’ve learned about Typefaces and the Principles of Design to redesign a Hello badge to reflect different aspects of our personalities. To do this, you will need to make important choices about how you arrange the page, what typefaces you would like to use, and what colors you would like to use to effectively communicate a message about who you are.

  • Create a new Illustrator Web document, with four artboards and landscape orientation (wide, not tall).
  • Take a few minutes to think of four words that describe you. For example, you  might use words like “student, artist, athlete, musician, gamer, superstar, etc.” This will work best if you think of your own, so try to think of four nouns that best represent you.
  • On each page, create a headline containing the words: “Hello” and “My name is”. Select a typeface and font size that makes these words easy to read, and make “Hello” slightly larger than “My name is”.
  • In a single, very large headline, type your name. Select a font that is appropriate for your name, and try to make your name fill the page without going over the Artboard margins.
  • Finally, near the bottom of the page, type the words “and I am a _______.” Fill in the blank with one of the four descriptive nouns that you thought up for yourself.
  • Fill in the background with a color, by creating a rectangle the size of the entire page and placing it on a layer below your main text layer. Lock this layer to protect your background.
  • Your goal with this assignment is to choose typefaces and page design elements that look appropriate for the descriptive noun that you have chosen. For example, since I’m a teacher, I used a chalkboard font called “Chalkduster”, since chalkboards are commonly associated with teaching. I also changed the background color to a chalkboard green to give the idea of a chalkboard.
mmchalkboard
  • Add any graphics or drawings that you would like to include to make your design more visually appealing. For example, I added the grey rectangle and the thin white rectangles on the bottom of the page to represent a chalkboard eraser and two pieces of chalk.
  • Repeat this process on the remaining three Artboards for the remaining three words you have chosen. At least one of the Artboards should use the custom typeface that you created yesterday on the Calligraphr website.
  • When you have all four Artboards finished, save the document as “Your name – Typeface Choices”, and upload the Illustrator document to the Google Classroom assignment post by the end of the day on Thursday, March 6th.

Assigned: March 4th, 2025
Due Date: March 6th, 2025

It’s super effective!