Had my Multimedia midterm yesterday, which consisted of being presented with a bunch of (fairly straightforward and not too complicated) Flash animations and being asked to recreate them from scratch. See example below.
I'm not too much of a curmudgeon when it comes to technology, I don't think (but boy, going through library school though, you see so many tech luddites who are so scared of Facebook and of blogging that you can't help but wonder how many of the younger folks are just going disregard them as knowledgeable information professionals to turn to...) HOWEEEVER I still do think that Flash is kinda bleh. Nobody likes Flash sites. Flash advertisements are annoying. As are intro animations (always skip those). Is it even worth trying to actually master, since in about 10+ years from now we'll all probably move on to something better?
Two (rhetorical-- I'm sure there are real & logical explanations) gripes for now: why isn't object drawing mode the automatic default? WHO would want to draw in anything other than object drawing mode 95% of the time anyways? WHY do I have to convert objects to symbols before I can motion tween them? This is why I shape tween things when I could/should motion tween them, ya know.
In any case, right now I feel like I'm just practicing my scales. Can't play any whole songs, nevermind composing something great from scratch.
But they say there's a huge learning curve for Flash. But then again, my design skills are pretty subpar, so we'll see if I ever really hit the ground running with this.