Flash Animation 4: Animating Your E-card

To complete the shape tween and make the fireworks burst shrink to nothing again, all you have to do is copy the first frame—where you already scaled the shape down—to the last frame, frame 24. Then repeat the process in the last step, and select frames 13-24 (don’t select frame 12!) and apply a shape tween to them in the same way. When you drag along the numbers above the timeline you should be able to watch your animation in full as the burst grows, then shrinks again. Don’t forget to save your work when you’re done, and then exit out of the symbol’s editing stage by clicking on the blue arrow in the upper left hand corner of the stage.

Movie clips won’t play in your main working area until you’ve actually exported the final, but there are playback controls in the library to view the actual symbol’s animation. You can preview the fireworks burst by going to File->Preview and watching how it looks with your entire scene. It looks a little silly now, but it’ll look better by the time we’re done.