What is Animation? Tools of Flash CS3

Frames / Fps:

Frames are the individual pictures of an animation sequence, the more frames in an animation sequence, the smoother and longer the animation will appear however this ties in with frames per second. An animation with 24 frames with a rate of 8 frames per second will run for 3 seconds, but an animation with 24 frames that runs at 24fps will run for 1 second. The FPS feature dictates how many frames per second the animation runs. The higher the frames per second the smoother the animation will appear but the faster it will run, requiring more frames to be added to lengthen it. The frames per second can be altered to suit your needs.

Onion skins:

Onion skin is the feature of flash (and other good animation software) that shows the locations of objects, symbols, drawn in lines etc.  On previous frames, this allows the user to create a smooth transition and make their animation more fluid by giving them a visual guide to how much a certain object has moved or been altered. The onion skin feature can be altered to show just the last frame up to as many frames as the user desires.

Layers:

Layers are a key feature on most good animation software like flash and even most photo editing / drawing software. It allows the user to divide up the key components of their animation (characters, backgrounds, buttons etc.) and place them in order of back to front. The background being on the bottom layer so that it doesn’t cover up objects in the foreground / buttons, and the buttons being on the top layer of the animation, layers can be named for convenience. Other Uses of layers in animation are the masking layers frame and the action script layer. The masking layer is used for spotlight effects (the gun from James bond intro for example) by drawing a shape on a masking layer you can highlight the area you wish to show on all the layers below the masking layer. Action script layers are specialised layers that contain the code for the interactivity in flash, like buttons for example.

Lock and hide:

Lock and hide is the feature used on layers, locking a layer prevents the layer from being edited in any way, background layers are usually locked to keep them consistent. Hiding a layer allows the user to draw below layers etc. The selected layer that is hidden will become invisible so you can’t draw on it or if you want to focus on a certain part and the background is distracting you, you can hide the background layer to give you a clear canvas.

Library:

The library in flash is used to store symbols and buttons, so the user can delete the objects from the current frame and not have to worry about having to redraw an object, they can simply access the library and copy/paste the object onto the canvas. Objects are added to the library by highlighting and converting it into a symbol.

Convert to Symbol:

Converting to symbol is a way for the user to store drawing and shape into the library for later use, this is so they don’t have to completely redraw an object. If you want to make a button you convert to symbol, if you wish to keep a drawing but don’t wish to make it interactive – you can convert to graphic instead.

Tween:

In flash there are 2 different types of tweening, motion tweening and shape tweening, Motion tweening a symbol will move it from one place to another on the canvas (from A to B) over a pre-selected amount of frames – the more frames the slower the symbol will move from A to B and the less frames, the faster it will move.  Shape tweening is similar to motion tweening but instead of a symbol moving from A to B – The symbol will transform into another symbol or drawing over a selected amount of frames – literally changing its shapes and colours.

Integrating other media:

Flash software allows you to import different forms of media into an animation, such as sound, video and images. Adding sounds allows the user to add music or even voice acting to an animation to make it more interesting – importing video’s is an interesting feature – in flash you could use action scripts to make a button and play the imported video clip. A popular method of animating is to use vector graphics and sprites, sprites are small pixelated images (Most sprites originate from older generation video games but there are some exceptions) and many sprites will have different variations and actions – like the character punching or walking – and to animate with sprites the user only has to put the correct images in sequence to create the animation.

Preloaders:

Preloading an animation is where the animation or swf file will render before it is viewed, so that it doesn’t freeze or crash. Preloaders can be more complex, for example showing a loading bar or even their own animation informing the viewer that the real animation is loading. Preloader files have to be small so that they can load before the animation itself loads.

Scripts:

Action scripts are the code used for creating flash buttons and other interactive media in a flash animation, the scripts can be coded to fill the many needs of a flash animation, such as adding a start button, replay button or maybe adding the interactivity of a changing vector image (by hovering your mouse over a vector image, the image can be converted to a symbol and be coded to change shape when you hover over the symbol or click it).