Flash Animation Lesson 1

1) Open your email (yahoo) and locate the email that you sent to yourself with the mosaic.psd
file attached.



2) Right click on the attachment and save it to your desktop.

3) Open Adobe Flash



4) Once Flash is open, you will see the welcome screen with many options. Choose Create New Flash File (Action Script 3.0)









5) Once in the empty flash file, choose Import to Library.

















6) Navigate to your mosaic.psd on your desktop.















7) An Import to Library dialogue box opens. Put a check next to all of the Photoshop layers that you want to use in your animation and click OK.


















8) In the lower right quadrant of your screen, click on the Library Panel tab, which reveals the Library Panel that was hidden behind the Properties Panel.
















9) In the Library Panel, click the arrow next to your mosaic.psd file folder to reveal the layers.



















10) Click on each layer and you will be able to view the object in the small screen at the top of the Library Panel.

11) Note that your Playhead is at position 1 on your Time Line and that your stage is blank.

* Note: The Zoom box in the upper right corner above the stage. This allows you to zoom in or out on the stage.

12) Which ever object or objectS that you want to the stage.

13) Right click on the object that you want to give motion to (animate) and choose Create Motion Tween and click OK.

14) Notice that Flash has added a second layer and has made it 23 keyframes long so that the animation will last for 24 frames. You can stretch this out further if you would like to lengthen your animation.













15) With the Playhead in the 24 position on the timeline, drag the object to be animated to the point that you want the object to stop.

16) This dotted line is your Motion Path. You can change the path by click and dragging from any point on the line.

17) Slide the playhead back and forth to see the object move along the Motion Path.

18) Notice that it is not until you move the playhead back to the first keyframe on the timeline that you see your other objects. This is because the layer that contains those objects is only one frame long. You have to highlight (click and drag to turn blue) the keyframes on that layer all the way to the point on the timeline that it ends, which is position 24. Right Click on these highlighted frames and choose Convert to Keyframes. Now move the playhead back and forth along the timeline to see that all of your objects are on your stage throughout the animation.

If your animated object's motion path takes it behind your other objects and you want the animated object to move infront of the other objects, then your must drag your animated layer to be the top layer on the timeline.

18) Now that you have completed your animation, click File> Export> Export Movie and choose file type Quick Time (.mov)

19) Upload the .mov file to your blog by clicking the movie upload button in a new post.