How to Make Flash Animation

Many people who like flash may want to make flash animation by themselves. Here, I will show you some knowledge for making flash animation. The tool you will need is Adobe Flash CS4 Professional.


Import Artwork to Flash
With flash CS4, you can import many content, such as multiple adobe creative suite CS4 applications. Let’s take importing Fireworks as an example. With Firework CS4, you can work with both raster and vector content. In it, assets can be created to import flash CS4. This Fireworks file is saved as a PNG file, which can then be imported to flash CS4. You need to create a new flash CS4 document to import the file by selecting flash file. You need to choose File >Import to import the Fireworks PNG file. You can import either the Stage or the Library. Import the Fireworks PNG design to the flash CS4 Library by selecting File>Import>Import To Library. Then browse to the file and click Import To Library. In the Import Fireworks Document dialog box, select “keep all paths editable” and “keep all text editable”. Click ok, the Fireworks asset is imported to flash.

Create an Animation
Now you can begin to make an animation. Firstly, you need to tell flash that you want tween the object. Then you need to tell flash where on the stage you want the object in the animation to start and end. Flash will automatically fill in the frames between the start and end points that you define. You have two kinds of tweening in flash: motion and shape. If you don’t want to change its shape, you can right-click the object in flash and select Create Motion Tween to create a motion tween.
Now you’ll see that the Timeline at the bottom of the applications has changed. If you want to change the object location, you can drag and drop the graphic to the desired location. After doing these, you will notice a line with dots appear from the graphic’s starting location to the final location. The line is motion path and it won’t show after you publish your file. Then you can click and drag the playhead to show the animation on the Timeline. Click and drag the playhead to frame 1, and then press Return to play the animation in flash. Now you can preview how it will look in flash player. It is advisable to test the animation you make in flash player and in flash cs4.

Chang the Animation
The animation you create is only an initial animation. You can modify and extend it using flash cs4. First, you need to change the direction of the animation. Take changing the destination from the lower right corner to the upper right corner as an example. Before do that, you must sure that you’re at the destination point by dragging the playhead to the last frame of the animation: frame24. Simply click and drag the object to the new desired location to move the destination. Then the motion path has been updated. You can also change the origin of the animation according to these steps, but the only you need to do is to move the playhead to the first frame or frame 1.

Add Midpoints to the Animation
You need to add an intermediate location at the middle of the animation. The process is the same as setting the origin or destination points, but the difference is that you need to move the playhead to the middle of the animation. A small text indicator is at the bottom of the Timeline. You can click and drag your mouse to scrub to a specific point or double-click and enter the location manually. Click and drag the objects to the upper left corner of the stage to create new intermediate destination for it. You also can continue to add intermediate points through the animation, with a maximum of one per frame. Just move the playhead to the desired frame and move the object.

Change the Animation’s Duration
You need to change the Timeline animation layer to change the duration of the entire animation. The only thing you need to do is to drag the end of the tween to either lengthen or shorten the duration.

Add a Curve to the Motion Path
Each segment of the motion path is editable. You can alter that and let the tween move the animation along a curve by simply dragging and dropping with your mouse. You need move the object to the upper right corner on a curved path instead of a straight path as soon as it has moved to the upper left corner. Only drag and drop the motion path in the second part of the tween. Then move your mouse over the motion path along the top of the stage. You will see a curved line icon appear next to the mouse pointer, then you can drag and drop the motion path to build a curve.

Resize and Rotate the Animation
You can resize, rotate, skew or stretch objects in flash with Transform tool. You can select the motion path with the Selection tool to rotate the motion path of the animation, change the locations of the origin, intermediate and destinations. After that, a box with squares along the edge appears around the motion path. The box is pounding box and the squares are handles. When the rotation icon appears, you can click and drag to change the rotation of the motion path for the animation. Then you can adjust the height of the bounding box to keep the animation within the confines of the stage. Select the top handle and move it down. Then move the bottom handle up.

To finish the animation, you need to add your stop action to the end of the Timeline. Click the New Layer button at the bottom of the Timeline to create a new layer. Please sure that you are on the last frame of the animation, select the new layer, and create a new blank keyframe by choosing Insert> Timeline>Blank Keyframe from the main menu. Open the Action panel by selecting Window>Actions. You must select the correct layer and you playhead need to be on the new blank keyframe. Finally, you can preview your animation.

flash animation, flash player