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Sydney CEO
Kelly Short
Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Contents
Kelly Short
Section
Page
Screen Layout
Flash Drawing
Motion Tweening
11
Shape Tweening
13
15
Movie Clips
19
Music
23
Publishing
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Screen Layout
Kelly Short
Kelly Short
Toolbar
Properties Bar
Stage
Timeline
Library
Flash 8 Animation
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Flash 8 Animation
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The Timeline
Key Frame
Layer Name
Onion Skinning
The Tools
Select (V)
Free Transform Tool (Q)
Lasso (L)
Text (T)
Oval (O)
Rectange (R)
Pencil (Y)
Paintbrush (B)
Erase (E)
Hand Pan(H)
Zoom (Z)
Stroke Colour
Fill Colour
Kelly Short
Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Flash Drawing
Select the Drawing Tool
On Straighten
Becomes
On smooth
Becomes
The Ink setting stays the same as what you have drawn
Kelly Short
Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Filling
In most painting programs, if you had a situation like the one left, and you tried to fill in, you
would end up with colour across your entire
screen. However, Flash allows you to fill large
and small gaps automatically when filling.
Kelly Short
Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Modifying Drawings
Selecting edges and lines in Flash MX
To select a line segment or the fill of an object, use the Arrow tool and click once over the line or fill.
Double clicking on a line will select all the curves in that line.
Choose the selection (Arrow) tool and deselect any shapes or lines that are on the stage. With the selection
arrow, move it over one of the shape edges. The pointer arrow changes when you're over the edge of a
shape that hasn't been grouped or made into a symbol. If it's over a curved line or curved edge of a fill, it is
a pointer with a curve next to it and will move the curve if you press and drag. Over a corner or endpoint, it
is a pointer with a corner, and will move the point or corner maintaining the straight lines. This will pull
both stroke and fill alike.
To reshape lines and fills, select them. Use the Smooth or Straighten mode from the Modify Menu or from
the Options section of the Toolbox. (You can adjust the amount of smoothing or straightening by choosing
Preferences from the Edit menu.)
Control-drag (Windows) or option-drag (Macintosh) a line to create a new corner point.
Pen Tool
If you are familiar with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, Macromedia Freehand or Fireworks, you've seen this
tool before. The Pen tool allows you to place points and create curves and lines that are repositionable.
Exercise to create a straight line:
To change a curve point to a corner point (or anchor point), use the Pen tool and just click on the point.
To change a corner or anchor point into a curve point, use the sub-selection tool, the option key and drag.
To delete a corner point, click on the point with the Pen tool.
To delete a curve point, double click on the point.
Fewer points means smaller file size.
A curve point is a hollow circle.
A corner point is hollow square.
http://www.utexas.edu/learn/flash/
Kelly Short
Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Modifying Drawings
The free transform tool allows you to modify any drawing. Select the
Free Transform tool from the Toolbar and then click on the graphic
you wish to modify.
Remember to Double click to select both outline and fill
Click and drag the corner handles to rotate
Kelly Short
Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Text
If you are wanting text just to display (not to change or be input) you are creating static text.
Select the text tool on the toolbar
Change the font and styles here
IMPORTANT:
If you are taking either the published or working file to
another computer that doesnt have the font that you have
used installed, then the default font (usually Arial or System) will replace it.
Fonts ARE NOT embedded in flash files.
If you wish to display a not often used font in your flash file, you can Break it Apart. This treats the text as
a graphic from that point onward, and you cannot edit the text or font after breaking it apart.In other
words, check that it says what you want it to say and its spelt right before breaking apart!
This converts the text to a picture, and can be edited like one
Kelly Short
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Motion Tweening
IMPORTANT:
Only symbols can be motion tweened, so you must
convert to a symbol before
tweening
Select everything on the frame (ie, the entire ball by clicking on the keyframe in the toolbar
Kelly Short
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
To Create the Tween: Right click on frame 10 and select Insert Keyframe
InBetween
Frames
like this:
Keyframe
Keyframe
While in frame 10, select and move the ball to the top half of the stage. This
sets the end position of the ball as at the top of the stage.
Select Frame 1,
which is where
you want the
Tween to
START
Change tween to Motion
On
CD!
Your timeline should now look like this
Kelly Short
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Shape Tweening
Create a new document
Using the paintbrush, draw or write something on the stage
On the timeline, right click on Frame 10
and select Insert Blank Keyframe. This
will insert a keyframe with nothing on it.
In-Between
Frames
Keyframe
Keyframe
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Flash 8 Animation
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Go back to frame 1
Select Shape
from the Tween
Option
On
CD!
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Flash 8 Animation
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Frame by Frame
A walk cycle is created by 4 frames, repeated over
The following parts are created for you to work with in the CD
Recoil
Contact
High Point
Passing
On
CD!
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Flash 8 Animation
Step 1: Make sure you
are in Frame 1 of the
SuperSteve Layer
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Step 2: Find the
contact folder
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Flash 8 Animation
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Find the recoil folder and click
and drag Steves parts across
Complete the same steps with passing and high point symbols.
Once you have completed one cycle, you can copy and paste individual frames to create more cycles.
If you want more information on cycles (including drawings of thousands of different cycles, there is a great
book by Richard Williams called The Animators Survival Kit: A manual of methods, principles and formulas
for classical, computer games, stop motion and internet animation
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Movie Clips
Notice here, it
says Scene 1
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Flash 8 Animation
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Flash 8 Animation
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Click on Scene
1 to return to
the stage
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Flash 8 Animation
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Flash 8 Animation
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Sound
Add a new layer and rename it sound by double clicking
Insert a keyframe where you want the sound to start.
Kelly Short
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Publishing
Publishing the file converts the project file to an .swf file that can be read on any computer with
the free Flash Player
Creates a HTML
file and embeds
the swf within
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Go to File>Publish
Your files are automatically published and should
then be in the same folder as your .fla published
file.
Project File
HTML File
.swf File
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Flash 8 Animation
Sydney CEO
Resources
Cartoon Smart This is my favourite Flash resource website, they sell video tutorials. There are some free
ones on the site for you to download, and Ive included them on this disk. They are well worth spending the money on, if you have some spare, and they do offer discounts if you want to sign up for the
newsletter, including $5 monthly specials. www.cartoonsmart.com
Flash Kit This is a comprehensive website of resources and tutorials related to Flash. Some of the tutorials
are of dubious quality, you do have to search through to find the good ones. I like to use it for the content that they provide for free that can be integrated into your flash filethe sound effects and loops,
for example, are great. http://www.flashkit.com/
Adobe website, the makers of Flash, have some excellent written tutorials, with some video backup, especially with the features new to Flash 8. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/learning.html
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