Flash 8: Projects for Learning Animation and Interactivity

3.1. Layers and the Timeline You may have noticed in the previous exercises that you placed everything on the Stage within a single layer of the timeline. Layers are used to determine which elements appear in the foreground and which app...

3.2. Keyframes and Tweening Now it's time to animate the boxes. The first step in doing so is to add a second keyframe in each layer. A keyframe is essential to all timeline-based animation techniques in Flash. While not a perfect analog...

3.3. Preparing Text for Animation Text is often an integral part of an animation, drawing the eye to key terms that need to stand out in the design. In the completed version of your animation, the text "Flash 8 Out of the Box" appears one sec...

3.4. Staggering Animation The animation you have is getting there, but it's still slow and pretty boring. One way to spice it up easily, and simultaneously speed up the text tweens a bit, is to stagger the animation of the words. The word Flash sh...

3.5. Alpha Effect The final step to complete the first version of your animation is to add an alpha effect. Currently, the 8 just pops in immediately, and it's a little jarring. If you make one small adjustment, it will fade in nicely: Mo...

3.6. Motion Effects Successful designers communicate in myriad ways. Themes are communicated through type, blocking, pacing, color, and movement. Combining these elements can have a powerful effect. Convoluted intros on web sites are virtuall...

3.7. Your First Script To prevent the movie from looping, you need to add an ActionScript method (also sometimes called a command or action). You'll use more ActionScript later, but for now, just add a simple stop( ) method and publish the movi...