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About Animation
Animation is the movement, or change, of objects through time. Animation can be
as simple as moving a box across the Stage from one frame to the next. It can also
be much more complex. As you’ll see in this lesson, you can animate many different
aspects of a single object. You can change an object’s position on the Stage, change
its color or transparency, change its size or its rotation, and even animate the special
filters that you saw in the previous lesson. You also have control over an object’s path
of motion, and even its easing, which is the way an object accelerates or decelerates.
In Flash, the basic workflow for animation goes like this: Select an object on the
Stage, right-click/Ctrl-click, and choose Create Motion Tween. Move the red play-
head to a different point in time and move the object to a new position. Flash takes
care of the rest.
Motion tweens create animation for changes in position on the Stage and for
changes in size, color, or other attributes. Motion tweens require you to use a
symbol instance. If the object you’ve selected is not a symbol instance, Flash will
automatically ask to convert the selection to a symbol. Flash also automatically
separates motion tweens on their own layers, which are called Tween layers. There
can be only one motion tween per layer without any other element in the layer.
Tween layers allow you to change various attributes of your instance at different
key points over time. For example, a spaceship could be on the left side of the Stage
at the beginning keyframe and at the far-right side of the Stage at an ending key-
frame, and the resulting tween would make the spaceship fly across the Stage.
The term “tween” comes from the world of classic animation. Senior animators would
be responsible for drawing the beginning and ending poses for their characters. The
beginning and ending poses were the keyframes of the animation. Junior animators
would then come in and draw the “in-between” frames, or do the “in-betweening.”
Hence, “tweening” refers to the smooth transitions between keyframes.
Understanding the Project File
The 04Start.fla file contains a few of the animated elements already or partially
completed. Each of the six layers—man, woman, Middle_car, Right_car, footer, and
ground—contains an animation. The man and woman layers are in a folder called
actors, and the Middle_car and Right_car layers are in a folder called cars.
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