Flash Animation 14: Gravity, Squash, and Stretch

From Adrien-Luc Sanders, former About.com Guide

Now I need to create a motion tween to show the first completed bounce cycle. It's just a simple arc; for web animation, we can leave it as a three-point triangle, as it will be moving too quickly to really reflect the difference and so there's no need to create extra keyframes to define the arc shape.

All you need are the basics: a keyframe at the point of liftoff, a keyframe at the peak of the bounce arc, and a keyframe at the point of landing, with motion tweens between each one. However: Do not make the snowball into a symbol before you create the tween. When you insert the motion tween it will make symbols of them on its own, but rather than library symbols with specific instances, they'll be an internal part of the tween. This is essential later.

Previous

• Introduction and Setting Up the Scene
• Creating and Placing Our Object to be Animated
• Basics of a Bouncing Animation
• Extending the Bouncing Animation
• Animating the Pull of Gravity on the Bouncing Ball: Deceleration
• Animating the Pull of Gravity on the Bouncing Ball: Acceleration
• Introduction to Squash and Stretch
• "Squashing" the Bouncing Snowball
• Bouncing Snowball Completed

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