Creating Your First Animated Movie with Flash CS3
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So you want to make your own animated movie in Flash. You've hired a screenwriter to make a script, a director to direct, and even a best boy to do whatever it is that best boys do (whatever it is they must do it extremely well to get a title like that). Well, slap yourself for wasting a boatload of money. With Flash CS3,
you are in control of every aspect of the movie.
What is a Flash Movie?
There are a wide variety of things you could consider a movie within flash. These range from a simple line of scrolling text, a button that changes color when you click it, a cool three-dimensional video game, or even a full blown cartoon or movie. The term "movie" is used anytime you use the timeline, discussed in our previous article.
For this example, we will start out creating a simple object, and end with a more complex animation of a bouncing ball. In future tutorials we'll create more complex movies, such as web buttons and banners, and work with layers. So sit back, grab a soda and a sandwich, and get ready to create your first animated flash movie.
Editing Movie Properties
The first thing you want to do when creating a movie is to set its properties. To do this, either choose Modify>Document, or right-click on the stage and choose Document Properties.
The document properties consist of the following:
Title: The name of your movie; it appears in the title bar of the users browser.
Description: A brief description of what your movie is about.
Dimensions: Sets the width and height of your movie.
Match: Allows you to change the height/width to its default size or to match your content.
Background Color: The color of the background your movie will play on.
Frame Rate: The rate of your movie; how many frames per second the user will see.
Ruler Units: Allows you to change the measurement units the program uses (instead of basing your height and width on pixels, you could do it on inches, millimeters, etc).
Don't worry if you mess any of these up; you can always click the Make Default button on the bottom left hand side.
For our example, we will leave everything at its default except for the Title, which will be Oscar Winner, and the Description: My First Movie.
Next: Creating an Object >>
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