Why do you need 5 years to learn this program.

[student in highschool]

I have spent a solid 5 months learning animate and can barely do anything. The help I have gotten is none. I want to leave my animation class because this hurts me more than my parents divorce. Make this easier please.  As if kids could use it. I wish you all would make a animate jr program for beginners. Because going right in to the mariana trench is terrible. Why do you do this. Please send the president of Adobe to help me pass my highschool animation class.

[student in highschool]

i apologize for the grammar errors. I am engraged

[kglad]

what problem are you having?

[BioME]

Hello student, I am sorry to hear you're having so much difficulty mastering Animate. It is a robust platform with an extremely steep learning curve. It isn't really meant for casual users. I question if it is appropriate for a highschool class. I agree it would be nice if a simpler if a jr program were available, but I don't know if Adobe would invest in that. Perhaps you should look for a less robust program, but I don't know enough about other options to recommend something. When I first learned it I had a similar experience. It took about 6 months before I was ready to start creating animations. The way I mastered it was to purchase a manual and practice with each function right after I read the instructions. Then, after I completed the manual, I started playing with it, often referring back to the manual when I couldn't remember something. Even after I learned enough to get it to do what I needed, I still only knew a fraction of what it offers; indeed after 15 years I still only know a fraction. However, when I have a problem I can't figure out I post an inquiry on this community. The personnel on this community are extremely helpful, particularly Kglad. I'm sorry I can't be more encouraging, but I will say if you do master it, then you will be amazed what you can do with it.

[Pamela374031522l3j]

I have taught Animate to Middle school students since 2013 as well as to HS students and College. It works fine but the lessons must build slowly and towards an end goal. I tell my studenst if they stick with me they will climb that mountain. Unfortunately, lately the mountain has become a series of avalnches due to Adobe changing user interfaces randomly, or blowing up user's methodology.

Righ now in the latest version on a mac- you can't scroll through the timeline with the reader and see your animation unless you unlock all your layers! Which idjit at Adobe made that change? The point to locking layers is to safe guard but you have always been able to scroll thru the timeline.

My class is also dealing with the new macs vs Adobe wars where things are tested properly- testing a movie or making a swf tends to crash us these days. Been with Adobe things since 2004. I think the sooner they fade into the distance the better for us all as they do not listen to their veteran users.

[Firewood：D]

Learning software is not that scary. There are many system tutorials on YouTube. The real difficulty is what happens after you learn how to operate animate software, such as making a 2D animation, but that's already animation knowledge.

[terryw30405050]

The way i learned to use this program is a bit unorthodox but worked for me. i found several swf files of things that i liked and enjoyed and ran them throujgh jpexs and made them a fla so i could open them in animate cc. this allows you to view the timelines and etc and while in theory could be a huge problem if flash was still in use, it allows you to view the masters form and for all intents and purposes is allowed for educational purposes. For instance in coded games, often theirs a Gotoandplay, a gotoandstop, etc all in the timelines that controlled waht happened for flash. when you see a timeline of a avatar in 4 direcions and one plays, this is often exactly why. Also in a classroom setting, its very wise to get a copy of the book "The Pragmatic programmer" and this works for ANY programming language and will alter how you look at making things in art and or code. the book i think has examples in c language but im the thoughts behind it work for any coding envirnment. as3 is very old and mabe not the best thing to learn, but it also has TONS Of resources out there for cheap to learn it, a valuable point when the budget comes to mind. many of the books i've got on it on ebay actually cost me more to ship than buy and work very simiularly to html5.