Mastering Animation Techniques: Motion Paths, Tweens, and Tools
Key Animation Terms
- Bone Tool: A tool used to add bones into shapes or symbols.
- Armature Layer: A layer on the Timeline that contains poses.
- Root Bone: The first bone added.
- Pose: The placement of the armature.
- Head: The beginning of the bone.
Motion Path Animation
What is motion path animation?
A type of animation that has an object follow a path on a guide layer.
What type of tween is used when making a motion path?
Classic tween.
How do you add a motion guide layer?
Right-click on a layer and select Classic Motion Guide.
To have an object follow a motion path you must:
Place the registration point of the object directly over the top of the motion path.
To have an object change its angle while it follows the path:
This statement is incorrect. To change the object’s angle, you need to enable “Orient to Path” in the object’s properties.
You would like to animate a butterfly fluttering. What is the best type of animation to use?
Classic tween with a Motion Path on a Guide Layer.
Exporting and Troubleshooting
To export the flash project as a movie, you go to…
File menu, export, export move or CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S.
If you created shape tween and you got dashes on the timeline instead of the arrow that means…
There is something wrong and the tween won’t work.
To rename a layer, I …
Double-click on the target layer and change its name.
To add a keyframe to the timeline I press on …. And to add the frame to the timeline I press on…
F6, F5.
The idea of giving the layer names is…
To distinguish between them.
True or False
- You can create only one keyframe on each layer. False
- In order to repaint a grouped object, you must ungroup it first. True
- Any object could be animated by motion tween and frame by frame with no difference at all. False
- The scene is a part of the flash document that contains its own stage, timeline, and layer. True
- You can animate 3 objects in different directions in one scene at the same time using motion tween. False
Animation Types and Their Uses
For each type of animation, describe when you would want to use it to animate an object.
- Bone Tool: Use the Bone Tool when you want to create skeletal animations, such as animating characters with limbs or creating natural movements.
- Motion Tween: Use Motion Tween when you want to create smooth movements of an object from one point to another, changing its position, size, rotation, or other properties.
- Shape Tween: Use Shape Tween when you want to morph one shape into another, creating a smooth transition between the two.
Free Transform Tool: It’s used to add some changes to the object such as changing its size, flipping it vertically or horizontally, etc.
Text Tool: Used to add text to the program that can be animated later.
Pencil Tool: Used to free draw on the program and has many shapes and properties.
Scene: Used to insert and control the scenes in the document as well as separating the movie into many scenes.
Layers: Used to add one new layer to the program and it has many properties.
Animation Components
Layers: Used to separate the stage into levels, not to confuse the movements of the objects.
Stage: A white area in the center of the window where the flash movie is created.
Timeline: The area that controls when the objects appear on the stage.
Toolbox: A collection of drawing tools used to create or customize the objects on the stage.
Frame: A single unit in the timeline.
Animating a Character’s Mouth
Explain in detail how you can animate a character’s mouth to make it look like it’s talking. Specify which type of motion you will use.
You can use Shape Tween to animate a character’s mouth. Here’s how:
- Draw the initial shape of the mouth (e.g., closed or in a neutral position).
- Add a shape tween on the timeline.
- In a subsequent keyframe, change the original shape to another similar to the mouth in a different position (e.g., slightly open).
- Repeat steps 2 and 3, creating different mouth shapes in different keyframes to simulate talking. You can either manually create each keyframe or copy and modify existing frames.
Tool Functions
Rotate, scale, or skew an object.
Add text to the stage.
Bend a line.
View the stage in onion skin view.
Select a scene to view.
Fill an area with color.
Add a layer.
Draw freehand.
Select an object.
Animation Basics
To draw a box on the stage, you would use the Rectangle tool.
You can add objects only to Keyframes in the Timeline.
To view several frames of an animation at the same time, use the Onion Skin view.
The boxes that make up the Timeline are called Frames.
In motion path animation, the object to be animated is placed on the Guided layer.
A row in the Timeline is called a Layer.