Now step back.

That’s today’s lesson in class. I’ve shown animation, shape and motion tweening. I’ve shown how to use timeline code to control different movie clips. Last week I introduced code logic and variables. Today I told them to, well, basically draw.

All those bits up there are for moving things around, getting user interactivity working, but that’s no good if you can’t come up with something for it to do. For the final project, they have to come up with an interactive something. A something that uses if/else, buttons, etc. Still, before they can get to the if/else, before they can make a button do something, they have to plot out what those somethings are.

So tonight we discussed final projects. Most chose to do a flavor of the following:

1. A match tile game
2. A system map showing moving trains and possible collisions!
3. A weather plotting animation – button clicks will determine how a “day” will progress
4. A phone interface with video chat faked
5. A she’ll game with bets and score keeping

Quite a few started worrying about the code, but seriously, that can come later. First do the fun stuff, draw out storyboards, figure out animations, deal with the coding later.

Once all the little bits that make the animation cool are ready, then settle in to the coding part. It’s like cooking, get all the necessary ingredients, mix the right bits together THEN worry about what goes in the oven and what goes in the saucepan.