Drawing & animating images & text in Flash

• In this workshop, you use the library from the movie animation.fla you created earlier or, if you didn't save it, create a new movie with a red ball symbol that you can tween.
• Export as an animated GIF and view it in the browser

Flash Drawing

• Start a new Flash movie 
• Open the Library for the movie animation.fla to reuse the symbols you created
  • File>open as library
• Save the current movie as text.fla
  • Open the library for this movie (Window>library) to view the symbols as you create them.

Flash Text

• Create a new symbol
  • Insert>symbol or <Ctrl +F8>
  • Make it a graphic symbol
  • give it a meaningful name (e.g., wow)
• Select the Text Tool and type some large text (72) with the font of your choice
• Look in the library window to see the symbol 

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Build a Flash Animation of the Shape

• To begin to make the flash movie, hit Edit>movie or Scene 1 on the timeline
• In the timeline, change the name of the layer to shape
• Put the cursor in the first frame of the shape layer
  • Drag the ball shape from the animation.fla library onto the movie canvas
  • If you do not have a saved movie, draw a red ball in frame 1 of the shape layer.
  • Select the red ball and click Insert>Convert to Symbol
• To animate the shape, create another key frame in frame 30 (put the cursor there and hit <F6>
• Drag the shape symbol to a new location while the cursor is still in frame 30.  You can change its size and rotate it by selecting the shape and hitting Modify>transform> and making a selection there.
• Right Click in the timeline and click motion tweening.
• Hit <enter> to see the animation 

Build a Flash Animation of the text

• Create a new layer and name it text and make it the current layer.
• Lock the ball layer so that you don't accidentally alter it.
• Put the cursor in keyframe 1
• Drag the WOW text symbol in the movie library and drag it onto the stage
• Do Motion tweening
• In different keyframes, change the size and position of the text as you did the shape
• Hit enter to view. 

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Export movie as an animated GIF

• File>Publish Settings
• Choose the GIF tab in the Publish Settings Window
• Make the Width and Height proportionately smaller
• Playback: Select Animated
• Click Loop Continuously
• If you want the background to be transparent, select Transparent in the dropdown list
• Click File>Publish Preview and choose GIF to see the animated gif.

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