Cheezeball99
But I was committed after that birthday party...
Flash Lesson 1
Howdy-hey dowdy, I'm Cheezeball99, and I'm gonna teach you about how to work with Macromedia/Adobe Flash. I, personally, will be working with Flash MX, for I am more experienced with it and think it is much simpler and to-the-point than Flash 8 (which I have also used, to less avail). Anyway, we'll start with a picture- the layout when you first start up your FlashMX.
(BTW, I'm not 100% on the exact names of the different toolbars 'n' such, so just bear with me)
1- Framebar. This is the single most important element to Flash- This is where everything happens; every square/rectangle on this grid represents a frame of animation. If this didn't exist then you would probably be in photoshop.
2. Layers. This is another VERY important element, layers of the animation. Hopefully you're at least slightly familiar with photoshop, because they function the same way; Except that you want to put almost everything on a seperate layer in Flash.
3. Animation Window. This is where everything happens. You draw here, create tweens, edit, import pics, and all other sorts of crap.
4. Toolbar. These are fairly self-explanitory, hopefully. You have all of your typical stuff here, pencil, paintbrush, paint bucket, selection tool, etc. etc.
5. Color Tool. This is where what colors you are using are displayed.
6. Properties. Typically, this is one of the first things you mess with, because if you want to tweak with these later then it will effect everything. There's the actual size of the animation window, the default background color, and fps, or how many of the frames in the framebar will form a second of animation; the more, the smoother.
7. Actionscript. I'm not going to lie to you; I'm not an expert on actionscript, by any means. This is what you have to use typically if you're going to make a game more complicated than pong; this is basically the interactivity stuff, if you are just making a movie or animation then typically you'll barely even touch it.
8. Color Mixer. Dunno why I drew attention to this one, or the Color Tool for that matter; They're basically self-explainitory, you pick your colors here.
Okay, got that down? Good. If you answered no then click the back button on your browser, because you shouldn't be here. In fact, just press Alt+F4 on your KEY-BOARD, that's the block on your desk with a whole bunch of buttons on it, and never touch a computer again. It's your call.
Still here? Good. Now, one of the most important aspects of Flash is 'Tweens'. A tween is basically having Flash automatically fill in the gap between frames of animation.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You CANNOT make the beginning and end frame of a movie and click 'Tween'. But if only... {/cheesey jokes}
Moving on. A basic demonstration of a tween would be what I am about to walk you through on, which is making a ball move across the screen with a tween.
1. Make a ball, or square, or whatever the hell you want. I'm making a yellow ball.
2. Right click on the very first frame of animation on the first layer up in the Framebar. Click 'Create Motion Tween'.
3. Now, right click on the 8th frame of animation, making sure you're still in the 'Layer 1' row, and click 'Insert Keyframe'.
The Framebar should now have a small black circle in the first frame of 'Layer 1', and a small black circle in the 8th frame of 'Layer 1'. Frames 1-8 should be a bluish color, with an arrow pointing from the first frame to the eigth, like this.
4. Now, making sure that you have the eighth frame selected, click on the selection tool (the completely black mouse tool). There should be a blue box around whatever you drew, and a small crosshair'd circle in the middle of it. Using your mouse drag it somewhere different. I'm dragging the ball to the right side. You should now be able to select each frame, and see that it moves incrementally with each frame of animation. Cool, huh? Now click on 'Control' on the top menu and select 'Test Movie', or just press Ctrl+Enter. You should see looping animation of wherever your object moved.
Congratulations, you just made animation Flash-style!
Howdy-hey dowdy, I'm Cheezeball99, and I'm gonna teach you about how to work with Macromedia/Adobe Flash. I, personally, will be working with Flash MX, for I am more experienced with it and think it is much simpler and to-the-point than Flash 8 (which I have also used, to less avail). Anyway, we'll start with a picture- the layout when you first start up your FlashMX.
(BTW, I'm not 100% on the exact names of the different toolbars 'n' such, so just bear with me)
1- Framebar. This is the single most important element to Flash- This is where everything happens; every square/rectangle on this grid represents a frame of animation. If this didn't exist then you would probably be in photoshop.
2. Layers. This is another VERY important element, layers of the animation. Hopefully you're at least slightly familiar with photoshop, because they function the same way; Except that you want to put almost everything on a seperate layer in Flash.
3. Animation Window. This is where everything happens. You draw here, create tweens, edit, import pics, and all other sorts of crap.
4. Toolbar. These are fairly self-explanitory, hopefully. You have all of your typical stuff here, pencil, paintbrush, paint bucket, selection tool, etc. etc.
5. Color Tool. This is where what colors you are using are displayed.
6. Properties. Typically, this is one of the first things you mess with, because if you want to tweak with these later then it will effect everything. There's the actual size of the animation window, the default background color, and fps, or how many of the frames in the framebar will form a second of animation; the more, the smoother.
7. Actionscript. I'm not going to lie to you; I'm not an expert on actionscript, by any means. This is what you have to use typically if you're going to make a game more complicated than pong; this is basically the interactivity stuff, if you are just making a movie or animation then typically you'll barely even touch it.
8. Color Mixer. Dunno why I drew attention to this one, or the Color Tool for that matter; They're basically self-explainitory, you pick your colors here.
Okay, got that down? Good. If you answered no then click the back button on your browser, because you shouldn't be here. In fact, just press Alt+F4 on your KEY-BOARD, that's the block on your desk with a whole bunch of buttons on it, and never touch a computer again. It's your call.
Still here? Good. Now, one of the most important aspects of Flash is 'Tweens'. A tween is basically having Flash automatically fill in the gap between frames of animation.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You CANNOT make the beginning and end frame of a movie and click 'Tween'. But if only... {/cheesey jokes}
Moving on. A basic demonstration of a tween would be what I am about to walk you through on, which is making a ball move across the screen with a tween.
1. Make a ball, or square, or whatever the hell you want. I'm making a yellow ball.
2. Right click on the very first frame of animation on the first layer up in the Framebar. Click 'Create Motion Tween'.
3. Now, right click on the 8th frame of animation, making sure you're still in the 'Layer 1' row, and click 'Insert Keyframe'.
The Framebar should now have a small black circle in the first frame of 'Layer 1', and a small black circle in the 8th frame of 'Layer 1'. Frames 1-8 should be a bluish color, with an arrow pointing from the first frame to the eigth, like this.
4. Now, making sure that you have the eighth frame selected, click on the selection tool (the completely black mouse tool). There should be a blue box around whatever you drew, and a small crosshair'd circle in the middle of it. Using your mouse drag it somewhere different. I'm dragging the ball to the right side. You should now be able to select each frame, and see that it moves incrementally with each frame of animation. Cool, huh? Now click on 'Control' on the top menu and select 'Test Movie', or just press Ctrl+Enter. You should see looping animation of wherever your object moved.
Congratulations, you just made animation Flash-style!
