Flash help please!

If you're on a PC, press the F1 key in the upper left corner of your keyboard. A wonderful window filled with tutorials, index and search features will appear. For a Flash newbie, the F1 key can be a convenient and useful button.

I don't know about the trial version, but when you install the regular version of Flash there are sample files included that you can take apart and see how they work. Probably in C:/My Computer/Program Fiiles/Macromedia/Flash MX/samples/swf or something like that.

Don't buy a book unless you have to. I've been using Flash for about 5 years now and between flashkit.com and the documentation that comes with the software I haven't had to resort to shelling out the $30+ yet.

Good luck!:)

http://www.mudbubble.com/db_tutorials/db_tut_index.html < probably the most recommended way to use flash for animation ,. excellent tutorials , A MUST SEE SITE !

Yeah, as Phacker already stated, you need to go to a Flash forum.

When will people learn? It ain't that difficult: If you need help with stop-motion, go to a stop-motion forum. If you need help with 3D, go to a 3D forum. If you need help with animation history, go to an animation history forum. If you need help with Ren & Stimpy, go to a Ren & Stimpy forum.

Generally the answers to all your questions are there if you just spend 20 seconds of your life doing a simple Google search. Maybe this message needs to be tattooed on the surface of the moon, or sandblasted onto every bathroom mirror.

Hey...

It's funny...you sound just like a Classical Animator to me. I started by thinking that I would just do the animated characters in photoshop, then import the jpegs and set them up on the timeline....ahh, but such is not so.

Although you can import photoshop images, then under "modify", choose "trace bitmap", to turn your jpeg into a vector image, then select and erase the whites, and keep the black line, that method ends up being time consuming, and ultimately frustrating, because it takes forever to smooth your lines, and make to reduce how heavy they are. You also end up with a less-than-pleasant line, that's all crooked, looking nothing like what you originally drew (Unless you spend hours editing it, bla bla bla..)

A much more effective way of animating classically in Flash, is to import your jpeg images into Flash, but only as a template for your line. You retrace the line using either the PEN tool (Which can take a little getting used to, and you need a stylus pen for thicker and thinner line), or you can use the LINE tool, which is much faster, and creates perfect lines (although they're there's initially no line change...it's just straight)
One way to convert your normal lines into lines that you can thicken and thin, is to select the line and choose MODIFY - CONVERT LINES TO FILLS. (Because Flash recogizes things as EITHER line, OR fill. Their two seperate entities. Once something's a line, then with your black cursor selected in the tool box, you can place your cursor on the outside edge of your line, and pull it in or out, to adjust the line thickness.
This takes time, like animation in general, but it's very light, and you can produce a great deal more work that way, without slowing, sloppy looking work, or even more time spent doing it another way.
Once you've taken the time to draw out all of the outlines of your character, click the little colored box next to the name of your layer, on the timeline. This changes your lines into "WIREMODE". There, you can zoom in very close and make sure that all of your lines are closed and intersect. (Note, that the camera actions, like zoom, move etc...are all the same commands as in Photoshop...this makes it easier).
Once your lines are all closed, then coloring your characters is a piece of cake. Take the PAINT BUCKET tool, much like any other illustration software, and with one easy click inside the area you want to color, presto, you have color.

Now there are two common approaches to animating in Flash. The Classical way, and the Flash way...

The Classical way, is probably the way you're more accustomed to animating..drawing frame by frame, lining them, coloring them, then setting them all up on your stage to produce animation.

In Flash however, using the "tweening" method, you can do what many Flash animators do. That's to take your character, and devide the limbs that you intend on animating into seperate parts (or symbols). Then, on your stage, you can set them all up together, like a marionette, and animate each limb together, moving limbs here and there. Then on your timeline, where you have your two key 1 to 2, you right click on the area of the timeline where you want the keys to tween, and select "CREATE MOTION TWEEN". Flash will create all the motion tweens between the two keys. (You'll notice on the timeline, that the area that's tweened, has turned to violet, and there's an arrow streaking through your tweens...that's to indicate that there's a tween there.....if you don't like the results, then right click the tweened area on the timeline, and select "REMOVE TWEEN", and readjust your keys.

An important note with this method, is that your anchor points have to be in the right spot, from the first to the second point. This point is a visible white dot in the middle (usually) of your object, when you select your object and choose MODIFY-TRANSFORM-FREE TRANSFORM (Or any other transform tool). You can manually (With your black cursor tool selected, take that anchor point, and move it to the right spot.
For example, you have the torso of your character on one layer, then the upper arm and shoulder on the next, and you want to animate the arm moving up. Your anchor point for your upper arm needs to be placed perfectly in the middle of your shoulder, so the arm rotates properly in place. Otherwise, after you've tweened your two key frames, and hit play, the arm will fly out of its socket.
So a good suggestion is, at frame 1, make sure that you've set up your anchor point in the right spot, then produce the rest of the keys down the length of the timeline based on that key. This way, your anchor point will always be in exactly the right spot, and when you tween, your arm will rotate properly from one key to the next.

Another important thing to know is LAYERS. When you're working with several body parts, or general objects animating in different ways or directions at the same time, then they all have to be on a seperate layer. You can't animate an arm, with three or four joints all moving in different ways, while on the same layer. This is because when you tween them, Flash will recognize all of the anchor points, and try to produce a tween that respects all of them simultaneously. What'll happen ultimately, is your arm will just fly all over the place. So make sure that "Torso" is on layer 1, "Upper right arm" is on layer 2, "Lower right arm" is on layer 3, "Right hand" is on layer 4 etc...any body part that has it's own unique movement, needs its own layer.

And to clean it all up and make it easy on the eyes, (for the animators sake), you take all of those layers, with animation, and tweens and whatever, select all of the frames with your black arrow, from beginning to end, and either right click and select "COPY FRAMES", or use the shortcut, and just press CTRL-ALT-C.....then on the bottom of your "library" window, click the "Create new symbol" button, name your symbol, select the first frame on your timeline (in the symbol), turning it grey, then either right click and select "Paste frames" or simply press CTRL-ALT-V, to "paste all frames".

Then going back to your original blank scene you can take that entire animation, which is all now a symbol in your library, and drag it onto your stage. You'll see the first frame of your animation, with a blue border around it. This means that your entire animation, with all the layers, is now compact into one solid object. To see your entire animation, you have to make sure that all there are as many frames on your stage, as there are in your animation. So go back into your symbol, check out which frame is the last one, then again go back to your main stage, and on your timeline, pull the slider on the bottom of the timeline all the way to the right, until you can see the number of the frame that you want, select the frame (ie...frame 235), to turn it grey and press the F6 button, to CREATE KEY FRAME. You'll see a nice long grey frame that stretches from your original at frame 1, to the last frame that you're at.
Now, you can set the red frame indicator back to 1, and hit play (the RETURN button is the shortfut for PLAY and PAUSE).

Presto, after all this time and effort, you have yourself an animation using Flash.

Sure, you're going to be writing back to this forum with a thousand questions, because there are little fricking annoying problems that you're going to run into, but you quickly catch on to the right way and order to work in Flash, on the timeline, so everything works smoothly. Trial and error my friend.

So have fun, and feel free to throw any other questions you might have at us.

Later,

Adam

sorry, I noticed I wrote a mistake...

When I was talking about making lines, I made a typo.

It's "Once your lines are converted to FILLS, then you can use your black cursor tool, place it along the outer edge of your line, and play with the thickness".

sorry about that, I have to learn to read over my post before clicking send.

Adam

Spoooze, these are both fairly basic questions, which can be adequately answered by reading the documentation. To get you started, here are short answers:

1. you need to have your character broken up into pieces at the points where the bends will occur, convert the parts into symbols, then nest the symbols so they'll rotate at the pivot points.

2. Text tool and opacity changes over time, just like in AE and Photoshop.

Now all you need to do is fill in the blanks and figure out what some of the Flash-specific terms mean. Unfortunately, that's a step everyone has to do for him- or herself.

I suggest you buy a book...

For any beginning Flasher you can't go wrong with http://flashkit.com . There are boards there and people that will answer almost all your questions. No one is going to do it all for you, but most of us Flashers learned with the help of others at Flashkit.

Pat