Summary

Hopefully this was one of the more fun chapters it certainly was for me. It's nice to combine the little bits of information learned and create something! The good news is there's still more to learn.

In this hour you explored a few special effects as a way to solidify and apply concepts including how shapes work, how to use Flash Professional 8's Filters, and Mask layers. Specifically, you saw how to paint with bitmaps and how to turn text into a shape in order to treat it like any other shape. When you used filters this hour it was only for specific and practical applications.

Gaining a more complete understanding of using Mask layers will ultimately prove to be the most valuable part of this hour. It's not so much the details of how the Mask layers work but rather the way you must wrap your brain around a problem and work out the layer orientation. Even if you end up using Blends instead of masking, the thought process is the same as with masking.