Going through the videos some more, I've just learned about bezier curves. I had seen these before, but never done much with them. They do appear to be very handy, though, and I have a feeling that I'm going to become very familiar with them over the next several months. Related to bezier curves, anchor points are new to me as well. The main point in a bezier curve is apparently the anchor, while a handle comes out of the anchor and has a small point on each side. The handle is used to make curves, while the anchor is - as it sounds - the anchor of the curve. Anchors can be added, deleted, or converted easily using tools of those names.
There are many similarities, as expected, to graphic design programs that I've used in the past, such as Photoshop. My knowledge of Photoshop is already proving to help me catch on much more quickly to Flash than I would have otherwise.
Even so, the only animation I've ever done was with simple GIFs, so I'm expecting some challenges when I get to that section of the tutorial.
Something I like a lot about Flash already is the way it handles the pencil tool. It can make a shaky line perfectly straight; it can make a mediocre circle perfectly round. And the anti-aliasing makes it all look very smooth.
The primitive shape tools can do many things that Photoshop cannot easily do (to my knowledge). In the past, I've had to do things manually in Photoshop that Flash can do in a matter of clicks.
In addition to these videos, I've been flipping through a couple of Flash books that my dad happened to have. They're 700-800 pages each, and one includes a CD with some project files on it. I'll be going through those after I finish this video series.
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