Movieclips

in Flash movieclips are like reusable animated gifs.

• Movieclips are different from animation on a movie scene because they only require one frame in the main movie, even though the movieclip may loop through multiple frames as it plays
• Movie clips differ from graphic symbols because they keep on playing even after the main movie's timeline stops
• Movieclips are especially useful to animate buttons, because you can insert a movieclip into one of the keyframes of a button

To create a movieclip in Flash, you can

1. Create a graphic symbol that can be tweened
2. Create the movie clip in the symbol editing window by animating a symbol
3. Import an existing animated gif into a movieclip symbol you create
4. Copy animation frames from a movie to a symbol of type movieclip
5. Insert a movie into a movieclip

Create a Graphic Symbol to use in a movieclip

• Open a new Flash document and save it as moveclips.fla
• Creat a new movieclip symbol: Insert>new symbol or CTRL+F8
  • Select the movieclip radio button
  • call it dog
  • File>Import dogclipart.gif onto the symbol editing screen
  • Modify Trace Bitmap and delete white section around image of gif, if there is one

Create a tween in scene1 of the movie

• Rename layer1 tween
• Drag the dog graphic symbol into Keyframe 1
• Click F6 to create a keyframe in frame 20
• Right click inside the layer and open the frame property inspector
  • Select Motion in the Tween dropdown
  • Select CW in the Rotate dropdown list
  • Type 10 in the Times input box
• Create a Keyframe in frame 10 (F6)
• Drag the dog symbol somewhere else in the editing window
• Click Enter to Preview movie

copy and paste frames into a movieclip symbol: dogMC

• Select all of the frames in the animation in the tween layer
• Right click in tween layer
  • On popup menu, select copy frames
    
• Create a new movieclip symbol (Insert>new symbol or CTRL+F8). 
• Call it dogMC
  • Rightclick frame 1 of layer1 in dogMC symbol
  • On popup menu, select paste frames

Create a movieclip jumpingBart  

• Create a new movieclip symbol (Insert>new symbol or CTRL+F8) -- call it jumpingBart
• Drag the dog graphic symbol into Keyframe 1
• Click F6 in frame 30 to make it a keyframe in frame 30
  • Right click in the layer between the two keyframes and select Motion Tween
  • Select CW in the Rotate dropdown list
  • Type 6 in the Times input box
• Click F6 in Frame 15 to make it a Keyframe
• Drag the dog symbol up in the editing window
• Click Enter to Preview movieclip

Create a new movieclip symbol from an animated gif: dogrunningMC

• Create a new movieclip symbol (Insert>new symbol or CTRL+F8). 
• Call it animation2.
• Import dogrunning.gif, an animated gif, from the flashcontent folder into this symbol.
• You will see the animation in the movieclip layer1 and the bitmap for each frame will appear in the Library window
• Click Enter to play the movieclip

Put the movieclips into the movie and see how they behave

• There already is one layer with a tweened symbol in it.
  
• Create a new layer called bartMC
  • drag dogMC movieclip onto the stage
  • give the movieclip an instance name dog_mc in the movieclip property inspector
  • insert a keyframe in frame 20 to continue the animation until the end of the movie
    
• Create a new layer called jumpingDogMC
  • drag jumpingDogMC movieclip onto the stage
  • Give the movieclip an instance name jumpingDog_mc in the movieclip property inspector
  • insert a keyframe in frame 20 to continue the animation until the end of the movie
    
• Create a new layer called dogrunningMC
  • drag dogrunningMC movieclip onto the stage
  • Give the movieclip an instance name dogrunning_mc in the movieclip property inspector
  • insert a keyframe in frame 20 to continue the animation until the end of the movie
    
• Click Control>test movie to view the animation movie.
• Save the movie for use in the next exercise in which we add actionscript.