Flash - Simple 'Tweening

Flash Exercise - Basic Shape Tween

To acquaint you with Flash we will do a very simple animation. Start up Flash.

Download Macromedia Flash (30 day free trial). You do not need to download the Professional version, however you can if you want to. Do NOT download any other programs or the Studio package. Only download Flash.
Start up Flash.
In the File menu select New -> Flash Document.
In the Tools panel, select the Oval tool.
In the empty white area click and drag to form a medium circle (hold down the Shift key if you want a perfect circle).
Select the Selection tool.
The Timeline is horizontal, near the top of the page. It represents frames (as in movie frames). You can recognize it because it has markings for frames in increments of 5 with tic marks in between.
Right click in the gray frame under the "20" on the time line and select Insert Keyframe.
Next, press and release Ctrl-A (Select All) on your keyboard. to be sure you have the entire shape selected.
Next, click and drag the circle to a new location.
Use the Escape key to deselect the circle.
Approach the circle slowly from the bottom with your mouse until you see what looks like a single parenthesis. This means that you can distort the shape of the circle. Do it, have fun distorting it.
Click anywhere in the middle of the gray area between your two keyframes, anywhere between frames 1 and 20.
In the Properties panel, in the Tween* menu select Shape.
You should see a pale green color and an arrow between your keyframes (see illustration).

Press the Enter key on your keyboard and you should see the animation.
Save your file as SHP_yourlastname and save it anywhere you like. The correct extension (.fla - for Flash) will be added automatically.
Online students: send me the file by drop box.

* NOTE: "tweening" is an old time animation term meaning to create the frames in between key frames. "Key frames" are animation frames where there is an important visual change in the action or change to an animated shape. You may have noticed that there also was a "MOTION Tween" option. Motion tweening is similar to shape tweening but works only with what are called "Symbols" or "Groups", not with so called primitive or stage level shapes. Plus you can't distort the shapes too much with a Motion Tween.