Monday, November 29, 2010

HOW TO STOP A SOUND IN THE TIMELINE

This tutorial will show you how to stop a sound in the timeline so it doesn't continue on and on.

STEP 1
Select a frame inside your sound layer. Go to the Properties pallet on the right and drop down the menu under Sound.


STEP 2
Click the EVENT area and change it to STREAM.


Thats it. Ta daa!

USING A MASK IN FLASH

Using a mask can be useful in animating. Think of a mask as a spotlight. Only the objects in direct view of the mask are viewable. Another way to think of it is as the clipping mask in Illustrator. They work the same way, only the mask in Flash has movement capabilities.

STEP 1
First off, you have to make your mask. Your mask can be anything (a shape, text, etc). For this example I will be using the letter T. Put the mask on top of the object layer.


STEP 2
Right click the mask layer. Select MASK from the drop down menu.


STEP 3
Notice that the icons changed from the page icon to a blue-green sort of look. They also locked themselves. This is important. In order for the mask to appear that it is masking anything at all it has to be locked along with the object layer. Unlock the mask layer now.




STEP 4
Create a motion tween on the mask layer by clicking the layer and going to the toolbar, clicking INSERT and dropping down to MOTION TWEEN.


STEP 5
Animate as desired.


STEP 6
Relock the mask layer.

STEP 7
Play the animation by hitting ENTER or using the shortcut COMMAND+ENTER to export to a SWF and thats it!




Go to this link to download the original file:


Enter the 4 character password on the right. Click DOWNLOAD. Wait for the time to elapse (lower right hand corner of table structure) and then download.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

CUTTING YOUR SONG IN GARAGE BAND, CONVERTING IT TO AN MP3, AND IMPORTING IT INTO FLASH

STEP 1
Cutting and editing your song is easy. There are multiple ways to do this, but since it is free and accessable on the Mac, I will be using Garage Band. As preparation, have your song icon available in the Finder window and open up Garage Band.


STEP 2
CS4 users select Create New Music Project.
*CS5 users select Piano (it doesn’t matter what instrument, but that’s how you create a project).


STEP 3
Name your project, leaving all other settings at their default.



STEP 4
In order to import your song, open up the finder window that contains your icon and click and drag it into the gray area below the Piano (or other instrument) area.


STEP 5
Here’s how you control the playhead (red vertical line with triangle on top). SPACE plays the song, while another rendition of SPACE will pause it again. You can move to a precise area of the song by dragging the playhead triangle to where you want it (while paused). Once you have found an area you want to cut out, make sure the playhead is directly at the end of the section. Go to EDIT, and click SPLIT.


STEP 6
To delete that section, click on the gray area that says “Drage Apple Loops Here” and then click the section you want deleted. Hit the Delete key to delete it.


STEP 7
Click the section remaining and drag it to the beginning of the first measure. This is important, because otherwise you will have a certain amount of silence that plays before your song.



STEP 8
Repeat steps 5 through 7 as needed, making sure there are no breaks in the song.
*As a side note, double clicking a section of song will zoom in to the waveform.





CONVERTING YOUR SONG TO AN MP3


STEP 1
After you are finished editing your song, navigate to SHARE and click SEND SONG TO iTUNES.


STEP 2
Change the Artist name, etc., as needed. Click AAC Encoder and a drop down menu will appear. Click MP3 Encoder. Leave the quality at High and click SHARE.



IMPORTING YOUR SONG INTO FLASH


STEP 1
An easy way to locate your file is to have it open in iTunes and click and drag it to the desktop.

STEP 2
In Flash, make a new layer for your music. Then, go to FILE, IMPORT, and click IMPORT TO LIBRARY.


STEP 3
Locate your file and click Import to Library. Make sure you are selected on your music layer and drag the file from your library to the stage. That’s all there is to it!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

ADVANCED TWEENING AND ADDING VS. EXTENDING FRAMES IN TWEENS

Tweens can be used for more than just one sequence of animation. In the previous post, I outlined how to do one sequence of animation. But, say you wanted it to now move to the right, rotate another 90 degrees and get bigger again. You can do that in a single tween.

STEP 1
First, you have to get your object set up as a symbol and apply a tween (see previous post). You can animate on any point of the blue rectangle. For this example, I'm going to use a 48 frame animation, the middle of the tween as the point where the object goes to the left, scales down, and rotates.

STEP 2
Select the 24th frame. Move object left, scale down, and rotate it 90 degrees.


STEP 3
Then, select the 48th frame. Move the object to the right, rotate it 90 degrees, and scale it back up.


And the results...



ADDING VS. EXTENDING FRAMES IN TWEENS

STEP 1
You can always extend the length of your tween by rolling over the end of the last frame until it turns into a double arrow. This is good if you want to make your tween animation occur over a longer or shorter amount of time. However, if you need to add frames to the tween (instead of making a 1 second animation sequence turn into a two second animation sequence) then you first have to select the frame after the last frame in the tween.

STEP 2
Hold the SHIFT key down and select the desired frame you want your tween extended to.

STEP 3
Navigate to the toolbar, roll over INSERT, then TIMELINE, and click FRAME.


And that's how you add frames!

  

Go to this link to download the original file:


Enter the 4 character password on the right. Click DOWNLOAD. Wait for the time to elapse (lower right hand corner of table structure) and then download.
 

HOW TO ANIMATE AN OBJECT IN FLASH

This is a brief tutorial on how to animate, or "tween", an object in Flash.

STEP 1
The way Flash animation works is through tweens (there are other ways, but tweening is by far the easiest). To start animating, first you have to select the object that you want to animate by clicking it. If you haven't already, you need to convert that object into a symbol. This is how Flash keeps track of each object that you animate. To do this, move to the toolbar and click MODIFY and then CONVERT TO SYMBOL.


STEP 2
Name your symbol, (leave the other settings at their default), click OK, and you are ready to animate.



STEP 3
After selecting your object on the stage, go up to to the toolbar, click on INSERT and select MOTION TWEEN.


STEP 4
In the timeline there will be a certain amount of blue bar. This can be adjusted by clicking and dragging to the desired amount of time taken to complete the animation. For example, if you want an object to take one second to animate, you would drag the bar to the 24th keyframe.


STEP 5
The way tweens work is through a start and an end point. Flash fills in everything in between with a gradual animation. The start point is inside the blue rectangle on the timeline and is noted with a black dot. This is the first frame that appears to the viewer. Select the 24th frame. As an example, let's say you want the square to move to the right, get smaller, and rotate 90 degrees. In the 24th frame you would move the object to the left, scale it down (using the scale or free transform tool in the tools pallet on the right of the screen), and rotate it 90 degrees (using the rotate or free transform tool).


And this is what we end up with:



To download this video...go to
Enter the 4 character password on the right. Click DOWNLOAD. Wait for the time to elapse (lower right hand corner of table structure) and then download.

Further reference:
Below is a link to Flash tutorial book on Amazon.com