How to do 2d Animation In Flash
How To Animate in Flash CS6 & CC | Tutorial for Beginners
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in this video you will learn how to
animate in flash even if you've never
opened the program before and if you'd
like to download the animation file we
create it'll be available at the end of
the video so when you first open up
flash you'll be greeted with this
welcome screen let's create a new
project by selecting actionscript 3.0 so
by default flash will create a video
that's 550 by 400 pixels which is an odd
size and I don't know why it does that
but let's change it so if we go under
our properties which may be located on
the right side or on the bottom or if
you don't see it you can go to window
and select properties right here so
we're going to go into our properties
FPS stands for frames per second which
is how many drawings occur per second 24
frames per second is pretty standard for
film and animation so let's leave it at
that for size we want to make a high
definition video so let's change it to
1920 by 1080 which will give us a nice
high definition video stage color you
can leave as white but my preference is
to change the color to like a neutral
tone like either this purple here or
like a grey so that way if you're
filling in your character with white
you'll be able to tell that it's filled
in okay so let's talk about drawing
stuff this is the fun part so we're
going to select our brush tool and down
here underneath your tools you'll see
your settings the paint bucket is what
color your brush will be and the pencil
tool is what color your strokes are
going to be we're going to be going over
strokes later so for now let's select a
fill color of black and down here are a
bunch of settings but the only ones you
really need to worry about are the brush
size which you can select here and
pressure sensitivity which if you're
using a Wacom tablet the lighter you
press the thinner your line is and the
harder you press the thicker your line
is so with flash there's two different
kinds of art there's fill art which is
done with the brush and then there's
stroke art or line art which is done
with the pencil so if we change the
pencil color to let's say a green then
that's our line art so to give an
example if we go up to our shape tools
select a shape and then drag something
out you'll see
we have a black for the fill on the
inside and a green for the stroke on the
outside and if we double-click we can
select a stroke and then change the size
over in our properties over here so you
can change the size and change the style
so to demonstrate the differences
between a stroke and a fill if we draw
with our paintbrush like so and then
select our fill-in tool change the fill
color to a white so if we select our
pencil tool and draw a curve on our
shape like that then take our fill and
do a darker gray we can fill in where
the stroke has intersected with our fill
shapes and then to get rid of the line
we can double click the line like that
and that's an easy way to shade a
character by using the pencil tool so
when you're drawing in flash I suggest
you use the brush because the brush has
more variety to do line weight and will
generally be more intuitive to draw with
this is just my suggestion you can
totally use the line tool if that's the
kind of style you want to go for so if
we want to transform scale and rotate
our shape we can go up to the transform
tool up here or press the hotkey Q and
you'll see transform controls form
around your shape so if we go to a
corner and hover over just a little bit
you'll see rotate icon then if we click
and drag we can rotate our object and
you'll see it's rotating around this
anchor point and when you highlight over
the anchor point you'll get a little
circle icon on your cursor we can move
that anchor point to one side and when
we rotate it'll rotate from that anchor
point so that's good for moving an arm
joint at an elbow for example if we
select one of these corners we'll get a
scale option so we can scale and just
like with the rotate tool it'll scale
from that anchor point and if we want to
keep our proportions in tact just hold
down the shift button if we go in
between these will see a skew so if we
reset our anchor point back we can skew
our artwork back and forth like this and
if we want to delete our artwork just
use our arrow tool select everything or
press ctrl-a to select all and press
Delete and it will delete everything on
screen now for the fun part let's
animate something so I'm just going to
create a quick background for our stick
figure to animate across so our scene
right now is bigger than we can
currently see so I'm going to go up to
this drop down and say show frame and
you'll see we're at 53% zoomed out now
you can see a border around our stage
and if we zoom out by pressing
- one more time you'll see the size of
our stage and everything that's going on
within the stage will show up in your
animation and if you have something
going on outside of your stage this will
not show up in your animation so make
sure all your action occurs within the
staging area so let's create a quick
background for our stick figure to
animate on so now we have a background
for our character to animate on so now
it's a good time to talk about our
timeline so this is where you'll see all
your animation taking place and if you
don't see this window just go up to
window and timeline so on the left side
you'll see layer 1 and on the right side
you'll see well a timeline or how many
frames your animation is going for so to
rename a layer just double click on it
we're going to call that background and
then this button right here will create
a new layer for us and you can think of
layers as stacks of paper so the one on
top is going to be the one that you see
in front so we're going to have our
stick figure animating in front of the
background so we'll call this layer
stick then we're going to take our brush
tool select the color black zoom in a
bit and draw our character and if we go
up to the timeline and right click on
frame 2 and select insert blank keyframe
you'll see that everything is
disappeared well two things have
happened
we've insert a blank keyframe on our
stick layer which means there is no more
artwork on this frame for the
stick-figure layer so stick-figure is
gone but our background disappeared this
happened because our timeline extended
to frame 2 but our background is only
being displayed for one frame so to
remedy this we need to right click on
our background layer and select insert
frame which instead of inserting a
keyframe just extends for how long the
background displays for and since our
animation is going to go for a while we
can go further down in the timeline say
frame 90 right click on our background
and say insert frame or we can use the
hotkey f5 so we select frame 90 on
background and press f5 and you'll see
our background is now displaying for 90
frames but our stick figure still
disappears on frame 2 because we
inserted that blank keyframe so to anime
we need to be able to see what the
previous drawing was or else we'd be
guessing where the stick figure needs to
go so we need to turn on something
called onion skinning and that's these
two buttons right here
so there's two different kinds there is
onion skin and onion skin outline we're
just going to use the first one called
onion skin and you'll see our red
playhead now has these handles on it and
this handle is how far back or how close
your onion skin will go so let's set it
to one frame and drag it to frame two
you'll see that even though we have a
blank layer our onion skin is showing a
transparent version of our stick figure
so if we were to animate his next pose
say him getting ready to run and then we
go back and forth you can see our
animation playing so to keep animating
we need to keep inserting blank
keyframes and we could right-click say
insert blank keyframe
have our onion skin on extend it back so
we see two drawings do another drawing
like so but a quick shortcut is f7 to
insert a blank keyframe that way we can
quickly draw go to the next frame press
f7 extend our onion skin and just keep
animating like that but the problem that
a lot of beginning animators have is
that their character will change over
time and the further down they get in
the timeline of doing this their
character may end up looking either a
lot smaller or a lot bigger than their
first frame so the way to remedy this is
just trace your first drawing and no
matter how far you get you want to
always reference that first frame so on
our next frame f7 instead of drawing
over here and guessing how big his head
is I'm going to reference the first
frame again so now when I'm animating my
stick figure is not going to change size
so let's animate this guy let's get him
from the start all the way up to the top
so now we finished our animation let's
export it as a video so we can upload it
to YouTube so to export a video from
flash we're going to want to go to file
export export movie then save it where
you want to save it and save it as an
SWF movie which is Flash's native format
so we'll click Save and then to convert
it to a movie file so we can upload it
to YouTube we need a free program called
swivel which is offered by Newgrounds
and it's really awesome so swivel will
convert your Flash video into a
QuickTime movie which you can then
upload to YouTube and it's completely
free I'll provide a link to the website
in the description below so one swivel
is opened we want to input our SWF that
we created so we select that click open
and most these settings you shouldn't
have to change but you can go through
and look and make sure that it's
exporting at the right width and height
the video codec you can leave that h.264
hi so all these settings you should be
able to leave alone so once your video
is loaded click convert and our video is
done so now we have a video file that we
can upload to YouTube or email out or
share as we wish and that's it you've
created your first animation
congratulations if you have any
questions or would like to learn any
more about flash animation or animation
in general just leave a comment in the
comment section below be sure to hit
that like button and subscribe to my
channel by clicking here to get updates
on any new animation tutorials coming
out did you make a really cool animation
let us know in the comments and thank
you for watching
