Topics:

• Class evaluations
• Final Project Concept Presentations
• Final Project Next Steps
• Using third party libraries: Tween Lite

Final PRoject: Project Planning

The next step in your final project is to create a detailed plan. For next class (after Thanksgiving!) you need to produce the following:

1. Project Brief
2. Process Flow
3. Storyboards

1. Project Brief– This is a text description of your project. It should include the following:

• Overview: A few sentence summary of the project.
• Audience: Who is application for? Include age range, gender, anticipated technical skills, language capability.
• Platform: How do you envision this application being used? Is it part of a larger Web site? A mobile application? Part of an installation?
• Functionality requirements: Describe how the application will operate. How many distinct states or screens or pages will it have? How will a user interact with it?
• Technical requirements: Describe as best you can what code elements will be required for the application.

 2. Process Flow – This is a bit like a site map for a Web site. A process flow visualizes the way a user would move through the application from a high level.

Every distinct state or page of the application should be represented by a rectangle, connected by diamond shaped decision points.

3. Storyboards

Take your process flow and turn everything that is represented there into a fully designed interface for each step represented there. Design these in whatever tool you are most comfortable with (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash itself, a combination) but turn the storyboards into a single PDF that you will present to the class after Thanksgiving. You should be able to fully walk us through the functionality of your Flash application with these storyboards. They should represent the near final design of your application. The more time you put into this step, the more time you will have for animation and coding. You are going to need it!

FYI, this is how the final project grades will break down:

Final Project Grading:

• 30% Concept and Planning
• 30% Interface and Graphic Design
• 30% Code and Functionality

Using third party libraries: Tween Lite

Third part libraries are code created by companies or individuals to extend the capabilities of Flash or make common tasks easier. These libraries arenot part of the core actionscript packages but can be imported into your Flash project for use in your applications. We’re going to look at one popular library today.

Tween Lite – A more robust tweening engine than the built in Tween class.

Here are the detailed instructions that we’re going to follow today to use Tween Lite

There is also a good tutorial on importing third party libraries here