Adobe Edge Animate: The Missing Manual

Chapter 4. Learning Timeline and Transition Techniques

The art of animation is all about images changing over the course of time in a natural, pleasing, and entertaining manner. It’s the same whether you’re creating a cartoon with a long-eared rabbit or you’re developing a presentation for the next quarterly sales meeting. Elements move, change shape, and change color. In Animate, that means that the properties that define an element change over the course of time. Those properties and their changes are tracked on the timeline through the use of keyframes—those little diamond-shaped markers.

The previous chapters involved some timeline manipulation. This chapter provides more complete details on timeline basics and controls. You’ll learn how to create timeline labels and how to set, move, and remove keyframes. And of course you’ll explore transitions, learning how to tweak them to do your bidding. When you’re through, you’ll know how to operate every button and widget the timeline has to offer.

Introducing the Timeline

Master the timeline, and you’ll be an Animate Jedi. You’ll have a jump on the learning process if you’ve used a timeline in a video editor, Adobe After Effects, or Flash. If you tackled any of the exercises in the earlier chapters, you’re not a complete stranger to the timeline. When you work in Animate, you use three panels to create your animation: Elements, Properties, and the timeline. Usually you jump back and forth among them, using their features as necessary. ...