Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Tips: Making A Movie

Making a Movie

Once Flash is open on your computer, you'll need to setup some defaults for your movie. For this example exercise, begin by going to the Modify/Movie menu, or just press Ctrl+M (Mac: Command). Change the dimensions of your movie to 400 pixels wide, by 300 pixels high. Then change your background colour to black by clicking on the white colour swatch. Leave the other default settings as they are.

For this example we're going to animate the first object in a "flying logo" introduction scene, which would be used to begin a larger movie. Right now we'll run you through the steps used to animate the first object in the movie. After we're done, if you wish to develope this example further, just create a new layer for each new object you create, and apply these same steps to those too.

1) First create a small red circle, about the width of your mouse pointer (see the tips page for more details). Now position the circle at the top center, and 'outside' the top edge of the movie canvas. This way, you won't see the circle sitting there before the movie starts.

2) Now double-click the layer name and name this layer "circle 1". Flash 4 automatically converts the first frame into a keyframe for you, and converts the circle object into a symbol.

3) Then, right-click on the first frame and choose "Create Motion Tween" from the menu. Now right-click in the 25th frame and insert another keyframe. Flash duplicates the circle shape on the 25th frame, and puts a solid line between the 2 keyframes; signifying that there is motion tweening between them.

4) Now center align your 2nd object (the one in the 25th frame) on the canvas and enlarged it by about 2 1/2 times. Apply a Colour Effect to this larger circle to make the colour change to a bright yellow-orange. (double-click the circle shape, choose Colour Effect/TINT from within the Instance Properties window: then choose your colour: then turn the Tint Amount to 100%)

5) Now, to make the circle appear to 'swing' down below center and then back to up to center, right-click on the 15th frame and insert another keyframe. By doing this, Flash 4 automatically creates another symbol on the 15th frame, that is independant of the other 2 circles. And this means that you can make further edits to it to create another effect between the 1st and 25th keyframes.

The effect we want to add is to move the circle on the 15th frame down, until it is just above the bottom of the movie canvas. This is where it would be, at the bottom of the 'swing' arc. Flash will take care of all the intermediate changes for you; such as the size and colour changes, and the motion. That's what 'Tweening' does.

And that's it. The first object is completed to this point. From here, you would continue adding other elements, such a text, and applying further animation to other objects used for the logo. Click "Play" in the Flash sample here to see what it should look like to this point. (you'll need to have the Flash 4 plugin to view this image)