Use different layers for different parts of character that you want to animate: head, body, each leg, each arm, each eye, mouth, etc.
Turn on onion skinning so you can see what is in previous frames
Use a combination of drawn images (which you can move and swivel wit
h the transform tool) and shape tweening to change shape of drawn
Observe how people walk
use a repeater (blank, nonkeyed) frame in between each drawn frame in frame-by-frame animation to slow down movement and economize on drawing
If yo
u are animating a photograph or a graphic, break it into parts to animate
Instead of moving the character across the stage, move the background (panning) by using motion tweening
If you need to change the animation abruptly to start something new, insert a keyframe to turn off tweening in that layer (in the frame property inspector), and swap the symbol in the property inspector
This movie has a play button to start it, so the viewer using a screen reader can read the text inserted in the <object> tags and does not have to see the movie play.
Click Windows>Other Panels>Accessibility to open the Accessibility panel
uncheck Make Child Objects accessible. Then the screen reader will read a desriiption of the Flash movie. Since the movie is stopped, the blind user will not hear descriptions of objects within the movie but will know what the movie is about.
Type in a Name for the movie
Type in a description of what the movie is about and what it does.
Draw a frame-by-frame character Animation
Create a new Flash document & save as ftfanimation.fla
Open the library (Ctrl +L) if it is not already open
Insert>New Symbol, and create a new movieclip symbol, person
Create drawn symbols for each body part that will move
Rename layer 1 of the person movieclip to body
Draw a body shape with the brush in the center of the movieclip, right on the registration mark
Select the body and click Modify>Convert to symbol and create a graphic symbol named body
Lock the body layer by clicking on the lock in the timeline
Insert a new layer by clicking the insert layer icon at the bottom left of the timeline, and rename it head
Draw a head shape with the brush, or with the oval tool
select the head shape and click Modify>Convert to symbol and create a graphic symbol named head
Lock the head layer by clicking on the lock
Repeat for a left leg.
Repeat for right leg --can reuse symbol for both right and left leg through transform tool and/or modify>transform>flip horizontal
Create a wide background image by importing a graphic into Flash
Height should be same as movie height although you can use transform to change it if necessary.
You can do Trace bitmap, but it may not reduce the image size of a photo -- can experiment.
Select a wide panoramic image
Create a movieclip symbol and insert a landscape image (e.g., stonehenge.jpg ) 3 times right next to each other horizontally.
If you flip the image horizontally on each side of the central image, then the seams between the cuplicated images will be less abrupt and noticeable: Modify> Transform > Flip Horizontal
OR another alternative background
Create a movieclip called background
import a jpeg or gif image file suitable for a background image.
Use the transform tool to enlarge the movie clip so that it is a little bigger than the Flash movie (fla) file
Create a background layer in scene 1 and drag it to the bottom of the stack of tracks.
Drag the background movieclip into frame 1 of the background layer
Hit F6 in the last frame of the background layer.
Create a motion tween in the layer between the key frames
Click in keyframe 1, select the movieclip, and use the transform tool to make it bigger. Hold down the shift key, and drag the lower right corner of the movieclip to make it larger than the movie.
Open the Filters panel, click the plus sign and add a blur filter. Blur it about 40 percent.
Open the Property inspector for the movieclip, and change the alpha to about 40%
Click in the last keyframe of the background layer.
Open the Filters panel, and change the blur filter to 0%
Open the Property Inspector and change the alpha to 100% or change the color to none.
Save the movie and click Control>test movie to see the results
Insert a new layer into the movie called "actions"
Click F6 in the last frame of the Actions layer to make it a keyframe in which to write the stop action.
open the Actions panel from the Window dropdown menu -- it is convenient to dock it with the property inspector group
Type the stop action: stop;
Click the little check-mark (check syntax) icon at the top of the actions panel to check the syntax of your actionscript before you run it.
Save the movie and play it: Control>Test Movie
The movie should stop playing at the last frame. But does the movieclip stop? It is like an animated gif.
Actionscript to stop the Movieclip
Return the curser to the last frame of the Actions layer, where you wrote the stop(); action
Open the actions panel
Since the movieclip is a child of the movie, with its own instance name, you need to write a stop action that tells the movieclip to stop playing.
Type the following script below your first stop action: person_mc.stop();
Check the syntax to be sure it is correct.
Save the movie and play it: Control>Test Movie
Add a Sound File to the movie
Create a new layer "sounds"
Click File>import to library and import a short sound file.
Create a key frame on the sounds layer (F6) and drag the sound file ont the stage.
To stop the sound file playing at the end of the move, insert this Actionscript in the existing actionscdript at the end of the movie in the actions layer: SoundMixer.stopAll();
