Flash Out of the Box

Chapter 4. Interactivity and Movie Clips

Where do animators find the patience to create entire cartoons by hand using Flash? Well, they don’t. To simplify the process, animators use another type of symbol in Flash called a movie clip. This chapter shows you how to use movie clips to great advantage, and how to control them via ActionScript.

In Chapter 3, we created a simple animation entirely on the main timeline. But what happens when we need to create more complex animations, such as for a cartoon character? A cartoon character usually has several moving parts, such as its mouth, eyes, arms, and legs. If we had to animate the legs every time the character walks and animate the mouth every time the character speaks, it would be very time-consuming. Furthermore, to add variety would require us to create multiple permutations, such as walking while talking versus walking while not talking. In this chapter, we’ll look at how movie clips allow us to create animations that play independently of one another. While creating Box Guy, the unofficial mascot for Flash Out of the Box , we’ll use separate movie clips for his eyes and legs.

Before we begin animating, we need to construct our cartoon character. To do this, we’ll use the Pencil tool, layers, and symbols. Once all the parts are built, we’ll bring the character to life through animation.

Drawing A cartoon Character

The first thing we need for our cartoon character is a body. Since this character will serve as a mascot for this book, ...