Adding Animation with Flash

So if any of you CDMers are like me and are attempting to use animation for your final project, here is an easy tutorial on how to get a simple image to move.

To do this, you have to use Adobe Flash, which is one of the programs we got with the purchase of the wonderful Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection. The official term for adding movement to a still image is called a Motion Tween. It’s important that you don’t distort the image if you need to resize it. By holding down the shift button before changing the size, it keeps all the pixel orientation aligned. Once you have the image sized the way you want it, move it to the area that you want the motion to start at.

Now, you can begin adding the motion tween. To do this, you right click on the key frame towards the bottom and select “Create Motion Tween”. You then move the image to the location where you want it to end. You will then see a green line that shows the path of movement you created. If you want to, you can enlarge, rotate, skew, etc. the image to a different size, just to get a different effect. Also, if you want to change the path of movement, you simply use the “selection tool” and change the green line to what you want.

Keep in mind that this animation works on a timeline, measured in frames per second (fps). The further you drag the red “time marker”, the slower your movement will be. In order to see the movement you created, click “Ctrl” then “Enter”. If all went well, you should have a perfectly good moving image!

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