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Chapter 3. Symbols and Animation

In This Chapter

• Understanding symbols and the library

• Creating and editing symbols

• Using the new Spray Brush and Deco tools

• Working with frames and keyframes in the Timeline

• Creating animations with tweens

• Understanding frame-by-frame animation

• Working with frame rate

After you're familiar with Flash's drawing tools, explore what Flash is best known for: animation. In this chapter, you bring your creations to life with movement, interactivity, and sounds. Flash CS4 introduces some significant new changes to the way animation is created on the Timeline, which will be exciting for new and experienced users alike.

First, you'll explore some central concepts in Flash: symbols and the library. Because symbols are an essential part of creating animation in Flash, you'll discover how to create and modify symbols before diving into your first animation tasks.

Visiting the Library

Each Flash document contains a library, a repository of reusable graphics, animations, buttons, sounds, video, and even fonts. As you build your Flash movie, you can add any piece of artwork you've created on the stage to your library, where the artwork's stored as a symbol (as shown in Figure 3-1).

What makes symbols so powerful is that you can reuse them as many times as necessary. Simply drag and drop a copy (referred to as an instance) from the Library panel onto the stage anywhere in your movie. Most importantly, each instance remains linked to the original in your library. Any changes ...