Motion Techniques

Automated motion does not require a lot of hard work to grasp, most of the techiques are done by simply clicking buttons and areas. The hardest way of making things move is by doing it frame-by-frame, or FBF for short, where you have to position the item carefully in a different position at each frame. These tutorials are written for people using Flash MX, MX 2004, or MX 2004 Pro.

1. Make an object like a circle and select it.
2. Press f8 and make it a Movie Clip, call it anything you like
3. on the timeline on the same layer you movie clip (or MC for short) is on, right click on a keyframe of your choice (preferably further on from the 20th frame) and select “Create keyframe”
4. Select your MC and move it to a different position
5. Go back to the first keyframe and right click on it, select “Create Motion Tween”
6. Press Ctrl+Enter (or just enter) to view the tween in action.

1. Make a simple object (Like a square with no lines)
2. On the same layer, make a keyframe at frame 50
3. delete the object and create a different one (say a circle with no lines)
4. Go to the first frame but do not make a tween, instead look for a little grey rectagle with a little white arrow pointing upwards at the bottom of your screen and click it.
5. Click on the “Properties tab” and look for a box with the word “Tween” on the left of it.
6. Set the tween from “None” to “Shape”
7. Press Ctrl+Enter (or just enter) to view the tween in action.

This is how to rotate an item to less than 180 degrees

1. Go throught the motion tween tutorial but dont go past step 4
2. Instead right click on the MC and select “Free Transform”
3. There should be 8 boxes surrounding your movie clip, move your mouse around it until your arrow changes into an circullar arrow, click and drag the MC to whatever you want (less than 180 degrees)
4. Create the motion tween
5. Press Ctrl+Enter (or just enter) to view the tween in action.

Easing makes a tween accellerate or deccellerate depending on what it is set at.

1. Follow the motion tween tutorial
2. Go to the first frame and then click on the little gray box with the white arrow pointing up and go to the properties tab.
3. On the left of the properties tab there should be a box with “Ease” on the left of it.
4. Set the slider to the amount of ease you want. Remember: 100 is strong accelleration. -100 is strong deccelleration.
5. Press Ctrl+Enter (or just enter) to view the tween in action.

Motion guides are used to motion tween an object traveling in a curved or none-straight path.

1. Follow the motion tween tutorial.
2. Besides the “add layer” button there is a red cross with a blue dotted line, click that to add a motion guide layer, make sure that is it above the layer containing the tween.
3. Draw a line from where you want the movie clip to go to to where it is (about its center)
4. Bend the line to create a bendy path for the MC to follow
5. Press Ctrl+Enter (or just enter) to view the tween in action.

Frame by frame is an method of animation without using any automated motion techniques. On each frame the object is moved or redrawn in a different position. This means having to make sure that the object is moved a certain distance every frame to make sure that it stays at a certain speed and moves smoothly, it is considered more proffessional to animate this way.