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Free Flash Tutorial - Animation with Timeline Effects

Free Flash Tutorial

Step Two: Creating the Effect

1. If the Text is not selected: Select the Text



2. Go to: Insert > Timeline Effects > Effects > Explode
   
   Note: Your computer may appear to 'hang' for a short while before you see the dialog box. Although Effects are easy for you to do they not so easy for Flash and it may take a moment or two for the program to make the calculations and the screen to update.
   
   You should see something similar to this:
   
   
   The Explode Effect dialog Box.
   
   
3. Play with the settings on the left and then to see the effect click the Update Preview button:
   
   
   
   
4. When you are satisfied with the effect click: OK

You can see just how quick it is to achieve this explosion. To do it with Tweens would involve dividing the Timeline up into seven different Layers and Tweening each letter individually. This way it is all done with just a few clicks.

The Timeline

You may have noticed that the Effect has automatically placed several frames in the timeline. These frames are not marked any special way (unlike a Tween):

The Effect names the Layer and adds Frames.

Note: The one criticism that I have is that the Effect is not marked in any special way. It appears just like any other section of the Timeline and as you will see in a moment it reacts differently to other sections of the Timeline.

Tip: It is quite possible to mark the Timeline yourself so that it will be easier to find the Effect latter.


A comment in the Timeline.

To place a comment in the Timeline select the Keyframe (Black Dot) and in the Property Inspector type something like this:

// Effect: Explode

Tip: Always start to type your comments with the Double Slash: //
That way Flash knows that it is a comment for a person to read and will ignore it. It will also not effect the size of the final published Movie.

Editing the Effect

There are two ways of editing an Effect:

• Return to the Effect's Dialog Box
• Editing the animation's nested symbols

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