Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Specs
Another side to consider when planning is the specs that you are
given by the hosting site or third-party ad-serving company.
These specs will include the items that were covered back in
Chapter 1, such as stage dimensions, maximum file sizes, amount
of time and/or loops the animation can play, the highest version
of the Flash Player you can target, and sometimes the highest
frame rate that will be accepted. It is very hard to say which
aspect of the ad is most important, and you would probably get a
different answer from each person you asked. However, if you fail
to stay within all the specs, your ad will most likely get kicked
back to you from the sites, and they probably won
'
t run it until it
is revised.
A good tool to help plan time spent on your project is a lowest
common denominator (LCD) sheet. An LCD sheet is exactly what it
sounds like
a sheet listing the lowest specs accepted on each
banner size by all sites. Let me explain a little further. You have a
300
-
250 banner that is going to run on five different sites. Of those
fivesites,twowillacceptamaximumfilesizeof40k,onewill
acceptafilesizeof35k,andthelasttwowillonlyacceptupto30k.
You obviously wouldn
×
'
t want to create the same banner five times
(once for each site), so the next thought might be to create one ban-
nerforeachmaximumfilesizegivingyouasmallertotalofthree
banners. Well, as we all know, time is money, and you should strive
to spend the time you need to create the banner one time and one
time only. Since the 30k version fits within the specs of all
sites involved, that
'
s the file size you
'
ll want to keep your 300
×
250
banner below.
Setting Up Your File(s)
Okay, so you
'
ve received the layouts from the art department,
you
ve been given direction on the animation and interactivity, and
you have your plan of attack ready to execute. Let
'
sgetstartedon
the fun stuff by getting a file set up. You can use one of the adver-
tising templates we discussed in Chapter 1, or you can set up your
own. For this exercise, let
'
'
s go ahead and set up our own 300
×
250 banner.
1. Create a folder to hold your Flash files. Let
'
snamethisfolder
”
2. Create a subfolder within the
“
myAd.
“
”
myAd
folder and name it
“
”
(this folder will hold all the images used in your ad).
3. Create a new Flash Document from the File menu or the Flash
Welcome Screen (Fig. 3.1).
cut_art
