Introduction
You've all been to failgrounds, walfas and swfchan, and spent hours fapping away at stuff, right?. Now you want to stop thinking of Flash Animation as an eldritch secret and try it yourself, right?
Not to worry. Fire up the program and get ready to go!.
BRACE FOR IMPACT!
There are three simple things you need to get started.
Vision: What do you want to make?. Do you have a script? A game plan?. Aim high and shoot higher!
Will: You can do this!
Time: You'll need time, lots of time. Because sloppy flash is made in less than 5 hours.
Things you'll be learning.
1) Frames and Layers
2) Objects. The "cell", basic unit of animation creation.
3) Actionscript 2.
4) Sleep deprivation.
Frames:
Ah yes, The empty canvas. So oozing with potential, yet nothing is there. There are two things you need to know about this sucker. There are two types of frames. Frames and Keyframes.
Keyframes will be your primary area of interest so let's start there. A keyframe is the virtual "film screen" on a film roll. A 'page' of flash, so to speak. A bunch of keyframes with different stuff will loop endlessly, making for great .gif creation.
Frames, on the other hand, are place4holders that tell Flash to show the same object in it's keyframe.
A series of Keyframes
[/][|][\][--][/][|][\][--][/][|][\][--][/][|][\][--]
You play this flash and you'll see a stick spinning in place.
A keyframe, and frames following.
[/][_______________________________________]
The 'stick' will not move at all, but will remain stationary.
Using Keyframes is vital for making basic flash loops.
Now onto the next subject... LAYERS.
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Using layers for the first time can be a daunting experience, but once you master it, it shall become a valuable tool in your flash-making arsenal. Some simple things to keep in mind will be of great use when dabbling in this feature.
Layers are like transparent canvas. The layer displayed highest will be the ones who'se objects and drawins overlay everything else. With a little experimenting, you can make pseudo 3D landscapes.
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Objects:
What are objects?. They can be anything from a button to Shinobu Maehara's Left Eyeball on flash. Go ahead. Scribble something. Like a rainbow penis.
Now you realize there's nothing lasting about this. How do flash artist do those clever effects with them?!. Simple!. Just select the object, and right click it, and convert it into an object!.
Now you realize that you can't do much with just a scribble. Heck, you'd have to hand-draw every keyframe to make something worth anything.
Upon selecting 'convert to object', you are hit by the next obvious question. Buttons? Graphics? Movieclips?! WTF.
Okay, calm the fuck down.
Look at the "X" key on your keyboard. That's a button. You press it, and things happen, but then the button can be pressed again!.
How do we do that in flash?.
Simple, you draw a buttony looking shape- heck, use that scribble of a penis if you want, but it has to EXIST, and be SELECTABLE!.
You select it and convert it into a symbol by right clicking it and selecting 'convert to symbol', then choosing 'Button'. in the dropdown menu!.
DONE!.
... What, you want to know how to make the button work like one?. Okay!. Double-click your new button, and it'll take you to the button editing screen!. You'll notice that the frames have changed from many to just four. The four frames show the button in four states. Untouched, mouse pointer touching, pressed and I have no idea how hit works.
Insert new keyframes and draw the buttons in their stages, and you're done!.
What, you want to make your grotesque button DO something?.
That takes actionscript, which I will explain in a moment.
Next... MOVIECLIPS!.
What do you do when you want a spinning stick in a frame? Or a twitchy stickfigure?. That's right, movieclips. Think of movieclips as a 'series of pictures', or a gif embedded on a website.
All you do is convert it into a movieclip, then doubleclick on it!. You are taken to the editing screen for the movieclip. Add keyframes and draw stuff, until satisfied.
Graphics.
Do I have to explain this to you, ya dumbshit?. It turns your scribble into an editable, playable piece of pixel art!.
With that out of the way... let's move on to Actionscript.
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So you've done a flash of scrappy lineart and watched your creation loop out of control with no interaction whatsoever. You want to chnage that, right? Right!. Actionscript's the way you can add some pizzaz to your wad of flash.
1) Stopping infinite loops.
You want your flash to stop at a certain point, so as to give time to click buttons and stuff?.
Click the frame where you want to stop and press F9.
This brings up the action page. Type
stop();That makes the flash stop on the frame that code shows up.
2) Using buttons to move from frame to frame.
Vital to creating walfas style flash, this instruction allows you to use buttons to navigate to frames.
Step 1) Create a button.
Step 2) Click on it, THEN press F9
enter the following code
on (release) {gotoAndStop(X);}
where X is the frame you want the button to go. Needless to say, this command takes you to a certain frame and STOPS.
Take a wild guess what
Code:
on (release) {gotoAndPlay(X);}
does!
REMEMBER: Those codes work only on button actions.
You now have enough skill to start making simple flash based 'comics' a la Walfas style.
IN THE NEXT EPISODE:
Sounds, music, Audacity and you! Don't miss it!.