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Flash Article

 

Creating Animation


Jen DeHaan

Jen deHaan

Flash Authoring QE
Adobe
Jen deHaan's blog
flashthusiast.com
webvideoblogger.com

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Understanding Animation
  3. Setting Up a Motion Tween Animation
  4. Adding the Motion Tweens
Created:
29 March 2004
User Level:
Beginner

Note: The following chapter is an excerpt from Macromedia Flash MX 2004: Training from the Source by Jen deHaan. This book contains lessons for you to follow to get an introduction to using Macromedia Flash MX 2004.

Flash has been well known as a program for creating animation for a long time, partly because it does such a good job at animating graphics. Flash is commonly used for Web animation because it allows you to create high-quality animations with a small file size, which is ideal for online content. In more recent years, Flash has even been used to create animations for broadcast, such as television commercials. The reason Flash is found in so many places is because it is a great tool for creating and animating vector graphics.

Animation in the Tech Bookstore

Figure 1. Animation in the Tech Bookstore

Macromedia has made it very easy for beginners and experts alike to animate objects around the Stage without much effort. It is even easier to add motion to a document by using Timeline Effects, which do the animating work for you. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can add effects such as blur, explode, expand, transform, and transitions to the FLA file. Of course, you can create your own custom animations by using tweening or frame-by-frame animation techniques. You will learn how to use all of these different techniques for creating animation in this lesson.

Requirements

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX 2004 Professional

Download Lesson 5

Buy the book

Download the sample files

What You Will Learn

In this lesson, you will:

  • Learn about the different kinds of animation
  • Add motion to the menu system
  • Use easing to slow down and speed up a motion tween
  • Change brightness and alpha levels using a motion tween
  • Add a shape tween for animating a shape
  • Create a frame-by-frame animation
  • Use a motion guide to animate a symbol along a vector path
  • Use Timeline Effects to animate instances

Approximate Time

This lesson takes approximately two hours to complete.

Lesson Files

Media Files

None

Starting Files

Lesson05/bookstore9.fla
Lesson05/map_starter.fla

Completed Project

Lesson05/bookstore9_complete.fla
Lesson05/map.fla

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About the author

Jen deHaan was raised by wolves in the deep woods of the Canadian north. Canada's chief exports include motor vehicles (or their parts), lumber, newsprint, nonmetal materials, and wheat. One overcast day in 2004, Jen left her life as a Flash deseloper (designer/developer) in Canada to write Flash documentation and samples at Macromedia in San Francisco. Aside from her ongoing work at Adobe as an instructional designer for web and video products, Jen runs several community sites for fun, and maintains a blog at www.webvideoblogger.com and weblogs.macromedia.com/dehaan. She believes that _root tends to be evil and misses Tim Horton's coffee.