Creating a Simple Animation in Flash - Basic Steps to Follow/Remember:

The simplest form of animation you can create in Flash is called a MOTION TWEEN. A Motion Tween is a change in an objects position (or other settings such as rotation, scale, colour, transparency etc.) between two points in time. For Example:

Time?
(how long it takes to move)

The objects position is set by changing its position on the main drawing screen (or Stage area) in Flash (in the above example the Diamond would move from Point A to Point B)

The object time (how long it takes to move) is set by assigning Keyframes (which look like Dots) in the Timeline area of Flash, for example:

Distance between Dots

(how long it takes to move)

First KeyFrame (Point A)

Second KeyFrame (Point B)

In the above example the space between the keyframes is 24 frames, which would equal 1 second (as Flash normally plays back animations at a speed of 24 frames per second) If you wanted to make the animation last two seconds, the second keyframe (for point B) would have to be spaced 48 frames away from the first keyframe (24 fps x 2 = 2 seconds)

In short there is a connection between the position of objects placed on the stage and the keyframes for the object in the time line:

What Flash does is work out the changes on an object between two keyframes and then animates the changes for us. The following steps summarise how to make a basic Motion Tween Animation in Flash: 1. Open a new Flash File (use Ctrl+N or File > New menu option) The New Document window will appear - choose Flash File (Actionscript 2.0) for the time being then press the OK button. 2. Make sure you can see the Stage, Timeline, Drawing Tools, Library and Properties windows, if you cannot see them you can access them from the Window menu 3. Draw a Shape using the Drawing Tools 4. Select the Shape and while it is highlighted convert into a Symbol (use Ctrl+F8 or Modify > Convert To Symbol menu option) The Convert To Symbol window will appear, name the symbol, set it to a Graphic Type and if you want set its registration point to the centre

NOTE: You must turn things into Symbols if you want to Animate them using a Motion Tween....

5. In the Layer called "Layer1" in your timeline Window you should see a Grey Square with a Black Dot inside it - this is a keyframe and represents the starting point of your animation.

6. If you want to change the starting position of the symbol on screen, make sure the first frame is still selected (as shown above) and then move the symbol to a new position in the stage area 7. Now click on frame 24 and press F6 to insert a new keyframe (or use the Insert > Timeline > KeyFrame menu option) 8. Making sure the keyframe at frame 24 in the timeline stays selected,

move your Symbol in the stage area to a different position (somewhere other than where it is at the moment) 9. Now select any frame between, 2 to 23 and select the menu option Insert > Create Tween (note in Flash CS4 choose the Insert > Classic Tween menu option)

10. Now your Layer will look something like the one shown below:

11. Now press (Ctrl+Enter) to view your motion tween in action.

Practice the above until you fully understand it, then take a look at http://www.smartwebby.com/Flash/flash_animations.asp for variations on the above technique.