Unit 65 – Digital Web Animation Assignment 3 – Checklist
Explain how you used the following:
Range
Workspace: stage, timeline, menu
bar, toolbar, library, colour palettes,
properties, preferences, help.
How Used Screenshot evidence
The stage is used to look at the work that you are creating
and organise the elements on each page into the places
that they should be. I used it for every page in order to get
the multimedia materials into the correct place and also to
see what the banner will look like overall because you are
able to play it.
The timeline is used to organise the assets into pages
where they will appear together. It also allows for
stretching out the assets so that they last the correct
amount of time.
The menu bar is the section along the top that allows for
the user to get some extra controls. It allows for different
windows to be opened. It is within this menu bar that you
can save the work that you have done. I used this a lot
because I needed to make sure my work was always saved
because the software is prone to crashing and if I didn’t
save then I could lose work.
The toolbar is used to select the tools that the director
software has to offer. These tools can be used for many
different things. The only tool I needed to use was the text
tool. I used this to make the text box at the bottom of the
screen on the middle pages. It is important to make sure
that you set the tools to classic before using because
otherwise the project would break.
The library or “cast” contains all of the assets that you
have imported into the director software. From here you
can drag the different assets into the timeline so that they
are where they need to be. Alternatively, you can drag
them straight onto the stage if you are already viewing the
frame at which you want them to appear.

Basic tools: drawing, eg pencil, line,
pen, brush, shapes; free transform,
eg rotate, skew, distort, scale,
envelope, ruler and guidelines;
editing, eg lasso, eraser, undo, copy,
paste, duplicate, insert, delete,
aligning, grouping, ungrouping
There is also another library that contains all of the
animations that director comes with. I used this to add all
of the effects to the banner.
The colour palettes within director are there so that the
person using it can choose the colour of whatever it is they
are using. This can be changing the colour of the font or it
can be changing the colour of the background. The only
time that I used the colour palettes is when I was changing
the background colour of the text box that I used at the
bottom of some of the pages.
The properties section is on the right-hand side of the
screen when director is open. It enables the user to change
certain things with the asset that they currently have
selected. It can also be used to change more general things
such as the size of the stage. I used this tab to change the
size of the stage to “1200x200” when I first started and I
also used it to make the text box at the bottom set to one
size instead of being changed so that it fits all of the text
into it.
The only drawing tool that director offers to the user is the
line tool. This tool can be used to just get a straight line on
the page. I didn’t have to use this at any point because my
graphics were made in photoshop therefore there’s no
need for it.
There are a few shape options in the director software.
You can make a square, a round edge square and also a
circle. I didn’t have to use any of these for the same reason
as I didn’t use the line tool.
The free transform option allows the user to change the
size of the assets that they have put onto the stage. You
can either just drag the points to change the size and
distort the image or you can hold shift and drag the points
so that the shape still stays the same.
In the software, it is possible to copy and paste the assets.
This can be done in the stage to copy an asset onto the

Objects: symbols, eg instances,
duplicating symbols, swapping
symbols, editing, grouping
Colour tools: eg colour properties,
eyedropper, creating custom
colours, colour swatches, stroke and
fill
Text tools: text, eg editing, moving,
rotating, reshaping, scrolling,
creating text blocks,
converting text to shapes
Manipulating objects: manipulating
vector shapes; single layer vector
shape interaction;
same frame or it can be done in the timeline so it can be
pasted wherever it is needed.
The director software doesn’t have these options
therefore I couldn’t use it.
The director software has a primary colour and a
secondary colour selection. In order to choose the colours
director offers an eye dropper. This means that the user
can click on a colour that is already on the screen.
The software also has a few different colour swatches to
choose from. They have different colours in each one and
they are organised in different ways. For all of the colour
selecting that I had to do I used the “System – Win”
swatch. This allowed me to get all the colours that I
needed.
There are no tools in director for drawing therefore there
are no stroke options because you can draw.
There is a tool in director that allows the user to write
onto the stage. You can use it to make text boxes that you
can then write in. The settings for the text box can then be
changed in the properties tab. This allows you to change
the background colour and also change the text box
between fitting the text to the box, having the box one size
and only the text that fits being shows and also a scrolling
text box where the size of the box is set but you can scroll
through to see the other words.
If you import a vector image from another source into
director you can then change the image in the normal way
when it has been dragged to the stage. You can alter the
size of the image in the same way as you would with a
transforming and grouping vector
shapes
Animation: frame label; frame rate;
timeline (playhead, layers, frames,
frame rate,
keyframes, onion skinning,
markers); frame manipulation, eg
copying, deleting, reversal;
testing movies; frame by frame
animation; tweening (shape,
motion)
Assets: importing, eg raster images,
vector images, sound files, video
files, movie clips;
resizing; bitmap to vector
conversion; asset libraries
raster image. The difference is that it won’t become
bitmapped with a large size change as it is a vector image.
The frame rate that the director software uses for playing
through the animated web banner is 30 frames per
second. This is something that is important to remember
because if the project needs to be a certain length it is
important to convert it.
The animations that you can use in Director come from the
effects library. These have some pre-set effects that can be
dragged onto the assets that you want them to change.
When you have done this, you can then set the
parameters for the effect in a dialogue box that appears.
This allows the user to make the animation look the way
that they want it to.
In my banner, I used a lot of transitions to make it look as
though it flows more smoothly and to just look more
professional overall. For each of these I looked at the
options available in the dialogue box and changed them to
fit what I needed them for. For example, the headings on
some of the pages are meant to rock from side to side but
the default effect for this rocked to much so I turned down
the angle.
Before you make anything in the director software you
first have to make sure that you have imported all of the
assets that you are meaning to use. In order to do this, you
click on file and then go to import. You can then select the
multimedia files that you want to import and they will
appear in the cast section of the software. You can import
most types of multimedia into the software including
videos and images. With videos, it is important to
remember to export them as QuickTime because
otherwise the video won’t work.
When making my banner I had to import every piece of
multimedia that I needed into the director software before
I could start to make it.
Advanced tools: scenes; guide
layers; masking, eg mask layers,
animated masks; timeline effects,
eg blur, drop shadow, expand,
explode, transform, transition;
nesting movie clips
Interactivity: scripting; behaviours;
actions; triggers; buttons; rollovers;
playback control;
preloaders
These tools are not a feature of the Director Software
therefore I couldn’t use them.
Adding interactivity to sprites in the Director Software is
relatively easy because there are pre-set navigational
features that can be dragged onto the elements that they
are meant to go on. They will then bring up a dialogue box
where their function can be set.
Scripting is used to make buttons that don’t have pre-set
templates in the library. One example of this is that if you
wanted to make a close button there is nothing in the
library that would allow you to do so. Instead you would
have to make it yourself. You would have to open up the
scripting section for that sprite and then type in the close
command which is “quit.”
Buttons can be used so that when the user clicks on them
they are taken to a specific frame. The “go to Frame X”
button can be found in the library and when it is applied to
a button or sprite it will open a dialogue box. You then put
in this box which frame you want it to take the person to
and then it will work. There is another thing that you can
get from the library called the “Go to URL” button. When
this is dragged onto a button or sprite it will then take
them to the URL that was written inside the dialogue box.
I didn’t use any navigation to take the user within the
frames of my project because it runs through
automatically therefore it wasn’t needed but I did use a
“go to URL” button to take the user to a ticket website if
they click on the correct sprite. I also used this to take the
user to the social media websites if they click on the icons.
Rollovers are where the image changes when the user
hovers the mouse over the top of them. These are created
using the “rollover member change” buttons from in the
library.
In my project, I didn’t use any of these because I didn’t use
any images therefore there was no need for a rollover.
If you put a video into the director software you can make
playback controls for it using some of the pre-sets from
the library. You are able to make a pause and a play button
that you can set to pause and play the things one a certain
layer.
I used this feature to make a pause and a play button for
the short video that I show in my project. I also used a
control button to control the audio that is playing over the
top of some of the pages. I made a mute button and also
an unmute button.