Unit 7 - My final flash banner edit + the process / evaluation

Dear Diary,

Today I have finally completed my flash banner using the software Photoshop and Adobe Animate. This task was overall quite easy to do than the last time and after more and more tries on these softwares I got more comfortable with it, which lesser the difficulties when using it.

Here is the flash banner I had created which was a flash banner which was supposed to represent and promote the day, valentines day ↓

Features the banner has :

Links people to a video full of floating hearts when you click on the black border.

Slow transitions where the banner fades through each picture....

Comparison to my sketches to the full design .....

As you can see from the sketches I tried my best to make sure that everything that I had drawn was contributed into my flash banner and structured exactly how I wanted it to be ..

The process of creating my flash banner

{ Step by step }

Before putting and creating my flash banner in the software Adobe Animate, I had to first bring my sketches to life and create each slide that I wanted to animate in the software Adobe photoshop. Due to me wanting my first slide to have a special and unique type of font (where the words are placed in hearts) I had to first try my best to find a specific font similar to what I had wanted and drawn, whilst also looking for fonts that I could use for slide 3

The website that I used which helped me to find my fonts was a popular a common website called Dafont.com, In order to find a font that was similar to what I wanted I had clicked on the themes section of the website and clicked on the header holiday and then I clicked on Valentine,

which once clicked on showed me a variety of fonts linked and styled to the theme of valentines day which was love. All that I needed to do was to browse the fonts lists, until I found one similar to what I had drawn and luckily I did when browsing on the fourth page.

The font was not exact to what I had sketched, but it was similar and I was more than happy to download it and add it in my final edit.

Screenshot of me downloading the font

The next font that I had to look for was one for slide 1 again (the header font) and one for slide 3 - For this part of text I wanted the font to look comical, sleek and professional, and for it to also contribute features that are linked to valentines day, such as chocolates and gifts.

I wanted the font to be very animated and have a nice sheen on it, making it resemble chocolate.

To find a font like this was very hard as most of the fonts did not have this sort of feature, they just had generic stuff such as writing with flowers in it or hearts, but after browsing and browsing on the same website Dafont.com I found a font that exactly looked how I wanted it to look, and the next step after that was downloading it again. After this I was at the stage where I needed to create my design using Adobe Photoshop.

Using Adobe Photoshop

After looking for my font all that I needed to do now was bring my sketches and concept alive on the software Adobe Photoshop. I had to assort my font where I wanted it to be and draw all the shapes I wanted on my flash banner, such as hearts on the right sized banner. When it came to drawing the hearts, at first I thought it would be quite challenging as I thought I would have to free hand draw it using a pen tool, but after exploring the options on the tool bar I saw that I could have easily achieved a heart shape using the shape tool and by clicking on the heart and dragging it on to my canvas, once dragged on my banner all that I needed to do next was fill in the heart with the color that I wanted, which was pink and also alter the background color of the flash banner.

For the font I just needed to use the text tool, find the specific font that I had downloaded in the text font box and type the words that I wanted to be present on my flash banner. Using Photoshop was the easiest task to do and I found it quite fun as I got the chance to present my vision and my ideas on the banner.

The next step after this was using Adobe Animate.....

Now it was time to finally form my flash banner and make it animate. Adobe animate was very easy to use the 3rd time round, after practicing and practicing I understood more and more about what the software was capable of. I still got support though just in case the effects used did not perform properly onto my flash banner. Once on Adobe Animate, all that I needed to do was to refer back to the previous instructions I had used when I was experimenting and making the coffee flash banner, but instead giving it the type of animation feature I wanted.

When it came to what animation feature I wanted to give my flash banner, I thought that instead of using buttons it would be pleasing once clicked on the flash banner that people were linked to a video showing hearts, just something that they could see which was associated with Valentines day, such as floating hearts or a cute video of a couple (contributing even more to the theme)

So, what I had to do was create a border around my banner, which could be used to transfer people to a different site/video once clicked on to it. Then I had to alter the coding and make it possible for this action to take place, by adding a youtube video that people could see when clicking on the border. At this stage once I had linked the video into the coding, I faced some problems as it was only possible to see the transition when you click actually on the black border, I wanted it to work when you just clicked on anywhere in the flash banner in general, but other than that I never faced any other problems and left the border how it was.

The video I used for my flash banner

↓

I decided to use this video because I felt it just related to theme of the flash banner and merely because I just wanted to add more to the flash banner than just fade transitions through each slide. I felt that adding a video to the flash banner would make it more intriguing and interesting as people would be unaware of what the flash banner contains once clicking on it.

Evaluation :

Making this flash banner was overall a good experience, as it allowed me to develop my skills more using the software Adobe Animate and get more comfortable using this type of software. It was my first time using Adobe Animate and already from this unit I can now say I understand this software completely and could see myself using it again for further projects in the future.

From looking at my flash banner I do see some areas that really helped to enhanced it and some features that I could have worked on more that could have made my flash banner look even more nice and pleasing.

WWW- what went well

I feel like the font that I used for both slide 1 and 3 allowed the flash banner to have some personality and stand out, being eye-catching and attractive to viewers that may happen to see my flash banner on a website.

- The shapes tool that I used to make the hearts, made it more easier to create the flash banner without using images of google and contributed more to the flash banner and theme which is love. The background that was also behind it, I felt was also a good feature as it gave the flash banner more color instead of the font doing so, I felt that maybe if the flash banner was white throughout it would look pretty plain.

I also really liked the whole concept of the flash banner, I personally believe that simplicity is the best and the fact that each slide all correlates with each other is what I personally feel went well. The flash banner was basic and easy to understand without being complicated.

WDGW- What didn't go well

When seeing the final edit of my flash banner I only saw two visible features that I wish I could have improved and perhaps made better. The 1st feature that I felt that I could have improved was the border I had placed on the flash banner, I wish I could have made it possible for people to just click on the flash banner anywhere and be linked to the video, instead of people having to click specifically on the black bit. I feel due to this problem it would be uncertain if people would see the video that I had linked, because they could just see the flash banner and not think to click on the border or it at all.

Another problem that I felt did not go well was the transitions on the flash banner, The fade transitions are good but I felt like when the image moves you can see that some of the images are larger than others and sometimes you can see in the transitions the image seems out of place on the flash banner. Maybe if I went over the sizes and check how much I scaled it to the template I could have corrected the images, but despite this I still thought it wasn't that much of a problem so I left it.