Create An Animation In Adobe Flash Or Animate Complete Guide

You can create a new project at any time in Adobe Animate or Flash by clicking File in the menu bar at the top, followed by New. If you want your animation to have any interactive elements, such as menus, or buttons, you’ll also need to select a scripting language. Use the drop-down menu below “Platform Type. " You can choose ActionScript 3. 0, which is the old scripting language that Flash used, or you can choose “HTML Canvas” to create an HTML5 document.

Toolbar: The toolbar contains all the drawing tools you can use to create and manipulate objects. The selection tool is used to select and move objects. The shape tool is used to create basic shapes. The brush and pencil tools are used to draw shapes free-hand. The pen tool can be used to create precision vector objects. The eraser tool is used to erase drawings you have made, and the text tool is used to add text to your animation. The toolbar also contains the Stroke and Fill color boxes, which are used to select the color of your objects. The Stroke color is the color of the outline around your shapes, and the Fill color is the color inside your shapes. The Toolbar is to the left by default. If you do not see the toolbar, click Windows in the menu bar at the top and then click Tools. Stage: The stage is the white area in the center of the screen. This is the area that will be viewable when you publish your animation. You can have objects on the stage or to the side of the stage. Objects to the side of the stage will not be viewable when you publish your animation. Timeline: The timeline is the horizontal bars at the bottom of the screen. This is where you create changes in your animation. This contains a series of rectangles that represent each frame. Every fifth frame is numbered at the top of the timeline. The timeline can have multiple layers, each containing different objects that can move independently. You will also see a red or blue vertical line. This is the playhead. You can click and drag the playhead to move forward and backward through the timeline. You can click the Play triangle at the bottom of the Timeline to preview your animation. Panels: You will see a variety of tabs and panels on the left side of Adobe Animate or Flash. This contains panels, such as the Library or the Properties panel. There are also panels for color swatches, motion presets, components and more.

The selection tool is used to select and move objects. The shape tool is used to create basic shapes. The brush and pencil tools are used to draw shapes free-hand. The pen tool can be used to create precision vector objects. The eraser tool is used to erase drawings you have made, and the text tool is used to add text to your animation. The toolbar also contains the Stroke and Fill color boxes, which are used to select the color of your objects. The Stroke color is the color of the outline around your shapes, and the Fill color is the color inside your shapes. The Toolbar is to the left by default. If you do not see the toolbar, click Windows in the menu bar at the top and then click Tools.

Tweening can be used to move an object from one position to another in a straight line, rotate an object, grow or shrink an object, or a combination of these types of movements. You can use tweening and traditional frame-by-frame animation in conjunction with each other.

If you want, you can draw a background image on a separate layer in the timeline. You can also import an image into Animate or Flash to use as a background. Animate and Flash are vector-based graphics programs. It is highly recommended that you use Flash/Animates’s built-in drawing tools in the toolbar or import an image from a vector-drawing program, like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Vectors can scale easily without distortion, while traditional raster images will get fuzzy and pixilated if you try to enlarge them. You can only tween one object per timeline layer at a time. So if you want to create an object with multiple moving parts, you will need to draw each moving part separately and put them on their own layer.

To convert an image to a symbol, right-click the object and click Convert to Symbol. Use the drop-down menu next to “Type” to select Movie Clip. Then click Ok. [1] X Research source To edit an object after it’s been converted to a symbol, simply double-click on it. You will see a blank timeline at the bottom of the screen that is specific to the symbol you have selected. You can use this to create symbols within symbols, each with its own independent animation.

Objects do not have to start or stop on the stage. For example, if you want an object to fly in from off camera, you would drag it outside of the stage on the side you want it to fly in from. That would be the starting point of your motion tween.

You will need to create a separate motion tween for each object that moves and for any change in the animation. Alternatively, in addition to using motion tweens to move an object, you can use the Free Transform tool to rotate an object or change its size. The Free Transform tool resembles a mouse cursor over a box. Click this option in the toolbar or press “Q” to select the free transform tool. You will see a bounding box around your object with a white dot in the middle. The white dot is the pivot point that your object will rotate around. You can click and drag the white dot to move the pivot point. Click and drag the small dots in the corner or side of the bounding box to adjust the size of your object. Hold Shift while dragging to keep the object shape proportional. Click and drag outside of one of the dots in the corner of the bounding box to rotate an object. Use the Properties menu to the right to adjust the ease of a motion tween. Easing in will make the motion start slow and gradually speed up. Easing out will start fast and gradually slow down. On Animate, select “Ease In” or “Ease Out” from the drop-down menu and then use the graph to adjust the ease. On Flash locate “Ease” in the Properties panel and enter a number between -100 and -1 to ease in and 1 to 100 to ease out. You can also use a shape tween to make an object change shape in Flash and Animate.

By default, Flash and Animate will produce animations at 24 frames per second (FPS). That means one second of animation will have 24 frames, but not every frame has to be different. You can adjust this if you’d like, and many Flash animations use 12 FPS, but 24 will produce a much “smoother”-looking animation. You can use frame-by-frame animation in conjunction with motion tweening. For example, you may want to use frame-by-frame animation to animate the movement of a character’s legs. But you may want to use motion tweening to make them move from one side of the stage to the other.

While creating your assets, consider all the parts that will be moving in your animation. Create a separate image for all the moving parts so that they can be placed on a separate layer in the timeline. For example, if you want to animate a character talking, it’s much easier to create the character’s blank face, and then create the eyes and mouth as separate assets. That way, you only have to redraw a new mouth and eyes for each frame, instead of having to draw an entirely new character for each frame.

To import an image into Flash or Animate, click File in the menu bar at the top. Then click Import followed by Import to Stage. Select your image asset(s), and click Open. Alternatively, you can import all your assets into your library. To do so, click File followed by Import. Then click Import to Library and select all of your assets. Then click Open. Click the Library tab to the right to view all the assets in your Library. You can drag and drop them into the stage when you are ready to use them.

You don’t need a new image in each frame. In general, having a keyframe every two to four frames will produce a good animation.

Make small, incremental changes. Your animation will look much smoother if you make very small changes to the keyframe. For example, if you want a stick person waving an arm, your second keyframe should not be the other end of the wave. Instead, use a few keyframes to transition from the beginning of the wave to the end. This will produce a much smoother animation.

You can record your sounds in Adobe Audition, or another digital audio workspace, such as Pro Tools, or even Audacity. MP3 will typically give you perfectly acceptable sound quality while keeping the file size to a minimum. Avoid WAV files if possible, as these are often quite large.

Click File in the menu bar at the top. Click Import. Click Import to Library. Select your audio files. Click Open.

Click Insert in the menu bar at the top. Click Timeline. Click Layer.

If you do not see the Properties panel tab or panel, click Window in the menu bar at the top. Then click Properties.

Left channel: This plays the sound in the left speaker only. Right channel: This plays the sound in the right speaker only. Fade to right: The starts the sound on the left speaker and gradually shifts it over to the right speaker. Fade to left: The starts the sound on the right speaker and gradually shifts it over to the left speaker. Fade in: This starts the volume at 0 and gradually increases the volume to full. Fade out: This starts the sound at full volume and gradually quiets the volume to silence. Custom: This option allows you to customize the fade and channels using an envelope. This option is not supported in HTML5 or WebGL projects.

Event: This will start playing the audio in it’s entirety when the keyframe is hit in the timeline. The audio will keep playing, even if the timeline or final SWF file reaches the end. It will play again, even if an instance of the sound is already playing. Start: This works the same as “Event”, except that it will not play the sound if an instance of the sound is already playing. “Stop:’ This silences the sound if it is already playing. You can use a separate keyframe to stop a sound that is already playing. Stream: This forces your animation to keep pace with your sound. If the frames can’t be rendered fast enough, they will be skipped. Unlike “Event” sounds, “Stream” sounds will not keep playing after the animation is done playing.

You will need Flash Player to view a published SWF file. Since Adobe no longer supports Flash, you can download Flash Player Projector Content Debugger from a third-party website like Archive. org, or Techspot. com. If you plan on doing further editing in Adobe After Effects, make sure you click the checkbox next to “Optimize for Adobe After Effects. "

If you have multiple file formats selected, click the format type in the menu to the left and check the Output File name for each format.

Click File in the menu bar at the top. Click Publish.

Alternatively, if you are using newer versions of Adobe Animate, you can click the icon that resembles a square with an arrow pointing up in the upper-right corner. Click Publish and then click the radio option next to “Video. " Then click Publish to publish the animation as an MP4 video file.

Saving your animation as a PNG, JPEG, Bitmap, or PICT sequence will render each frame of your animation as an individual image. You can load these images into a video editor, like Premiere Pro, or After Effects as an image sequence and render your animation as a video file. What’s useful about this method is that if Flash or Animate crashes while publishing your animation, you can start up again right where you left off.

If you are exporting your animation as an image sequence, each image filename will be numbered sequentially. It’s recommended you save your image sequence images to a separate folder.