StepByStep Index
Changing a Flash Symbol Type / Symbol Properties
Once you create a Flash symbol, its properties aren't set in stone.
Animated Flash-Only Thumbnail Gallery I
Upgrade your static thumbnail gallery with Flash animations to make your thumbnails interactive, and keep all of your content contained on a single page.
Animating with ActionScripts
There's more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to pluck a chicken, and more than one way to animate in Flash. Use ActionScripts to animate changes in size, color, position, and anything else that you can code.
Flash Halloween Costume Dress-Up Doll I: Artwork & Setup
Don't feel like getting dolled up for Halloween? Then create a virtual doll to do the trick-or-treating for you. This lesson starts off a two-part look at how to create a Flash version of a paper doll, by walking through creating the various layers of artwork required and arranging that artwork in Flash.
Flash Animation 6: Using Text in Flash to Give Your Character a Voice
This will be a fairly simple lesson. Before we get into animating the limbs, we're going to add speech bubbles--we'll learn about adding actual audio tracks later--to learn about working with text in Flash, and to give our characters a "voice" to communicate with the viewer.
Dynamic eCard with Flash and PHP
Combing Flash animation, ActionScripting, and PHP to create an eCard with user-defined messages taken from input fields, and then dynamically generate a URL that allows users to share their custom eCard message via e-mail, IM, or web pages.
Flash Frame-By-Frame Animation: Detailed Animation Part V
This lesson is where we really start to see the advantage of using Flash for traditional frame-by-frame animation, because we're going to use symbols and various shortcuts and transforming tools to create one eye and then reuse it on each frame.
Flash Frame-By-Frame Animation: Detailed Animation Part VI
After animating and detailing a moving human body, let's do something a little different with something less solid: the body's clothing. Animating the clothing simply moving with the body would use the same techniques that we've covered in past lessons, but now we'll add a little twist by causing the clothing to also move with the momentum of the body's motion.
Flash Animation 4: Animating Your E-card
Now that we’ve set the stage for our E-card, let’s go ahead and animate it. For the first part of that, we’re going to use a new kind of symbol called a Movie Clip.
Flash Frame-By-Frame Animation: Detailed Animation Part III
Detail is good--but it's even better when it's been retraced and smoothed out for clean line art. For that, we'll need to use the Pen Tool to retrace our animation.
Flash Animation 15: Starting and Stopping Sound Effects
Let's pick up on the last lesson to add a bouncing sound effect to our squash and stretch animation, using Flash audio to bring more life and depth to the animation.
Flash Animation 22: Flash for Web Design: GUI Design
The first part of setting up a website in Flash is designing a GUI (graphical user interface) as a "container" for your content, and then making that GUI workable.
Flash MX Effects: Text Outlines
You don't need Flash 8 to create effects like drop shadows, outer glows, or stroked text. You can simulate these effects just using a little creative layering and fill effects in Flash MX and earlier versions.
Flash Animation 20: Flash for Web Design: Text Links
To start off simply, we're just going to create the foundation for a basic text menu with rollover links.
Flash Animation 14: Gravity, Squash, and Stretch
It's time to learn how to use Flash with classic animation techniques to portray gravity, weight, and squash and stretch. Just in time for the winter holidays, too--with a snowy scene and a bouncing snowball to demonstrate the techniques.
Flash Frame-By-Frame Animation: Detailed Animation Part VII
Instead of using plain solid color, for this Flash lesson let's start using gradients to add another layer of depth and fullness to our animation, before finishing the cycling motion that we started in the last lesson.
Flash Cursor Spotlight Revisited II: Masking
Learn layer masking to explore yet another way to create a spotlight that follows the mouse around the Flash stage to reveal your movie.
Flash MX Effects: Drop Shadow
You don't need Flash 8 to create effects like drop shadows, outer glows, or stroked text. You can simulate these effects just using a little creative layering and fill effects in Flash MX and earlier versions.
Flash Digital Clock
Create a digital clock--twenty-four-hour time or twelve-hour time--in Flash, using dynamic text properties and the hour, minute, and second parameters of the basic Date functions.
Easy Flash CrossFade Effect
Fade between one image and another using layers, alpha controls, and tweens.
Flash Animation 21: Flash for Web Design: getURL Command
Flash's getURL command lets you make a hyperlink out of any graphic or symbol.
Flash Animation 9: Adding Interactivity with Buttons
For this lesson, we're just going to learn how to create a simple button that doesn't really do anything other than demonstrate a mouse-over effect, just for the sake of learning the steps. We'll also touch on action-scripting for the first time.
Flash Tip: Program Tools: Brush Tool
Using the Brush tool, you can paint in freeform in Flash, fine-tuning the way your fills are applied using various options.
Flash Animation 19: Drag and Drop ActionScripting Commands
The startDrag and stopDrag commands help increase user interactivity with our Flash movies by letting them manipulate our movie clips with the click of a mouse.
Flash Frame-By-Frame Animation: Detailed Animation Part II
Now that we've used Flash to create a basic rough-sketched animation of our desired motion, it's time to start layering a little detail on top of it to flesh everything out.