Flash Out of the Box

Chapter 3. Your First Animation

Now that you have some drawing skills under your belt, you’re ready to start making graphics fly around the screen—but please don’t. Animation can be an effective method of communication, or it can seriously damage the user experience. So animate responsibly.

Flash started as a web animation tool and remains one of the best on the market. Unfortunately, arbitrary motion graphics can repel users. Conversely, a well-thought-out and subtle animation can help make a killer first impression when it is part of a larger presentation.

Often, animation can be the key to a more engaging presentation, effective charts and graphs, and entertaining online advertisements. Flash animation has been used for everything from movie credits and DVD menus to billboards on the roofs of taxicabs. In this chapter, you’ll use a few essential animation techniques to create your first animated Flash movie: a short ad for Flash Out of the Box. Later, you’ll further your skills by morphing a graphic from one shape to another and publishing a Flash .swf file for use on the Web.

The animation is straightforward. We’ll draw a series of colored boxes and then add the text, “Flash Out of the Box” as seen in Figure 3-1. Of course, we’ll jazz it up a little by making the boxes grow and the text slide into place—just enough to catch the reader’s eye without assaulting him.

Figure 3-1. The ...