Flash 8 Cookbook

Chapter 4. Creating Animation

Before it was known as a platform for rich Internet applications, with its capacities for interactivity, XML, database integration, video, and real-time communications features, Flash was an animation tool. And in spite of its incredible growth in other directions, Flash remains an excellent tool for creating animations.

Animations simulate motion by playing back a series of related images, usually at a higher rate of speed than the eye and brain can process. Instead of processing each image individually, the brain connects the different images, causing the perception of motion. The effectiveness of this illusion of motion depends on numerous factors, ranging from the subjective and aesthetic to the objective, as in the case of frame rate.

Because animations usually depend on the rapid playback of many images, they are often time-consuming and painstaking to create. Drawing a single image can take hours; drawing hundreds or thousands of images to be played back at 12 frames per second or higher can be a daunting project indeed.

You can use a number of different techniques and tools in Flash to expedite and, in many cases, automate the process of creating animation, from Flash’s ability to store separate discrete elements in symbols and layers to its ability to automate the animation of changes in properties, such as location and opacity. Features such as automatic acceleration and deceleration controls, rotation, and motion paths provide further control ...