Step
8: Select the Brush Tool and use it to individually draw the fireworks.
Your stroke selection won’t matter because the Brush Tool draws fills
without line strokes. Use a small brush, and leave it set to the default circular shape. Leave the Brush mode to
'Paint Normal'. If you use a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet there is a small
flourish to the right of the Brush mode that will allow you to choose Use
Pressure button. Just as a note, Flash tends to make brush lines kind of
jittery, so you may want to do without the pressure-sensitive selection.
Step
9: Open the Color Mixer, select
Radial, click marker #1 and select a red/ Now click the last marker and select a golden-orange,
then click just below the
gradient line to create a stop about half-way between the first and last
stop. Select a violet color. You have just set a three-color radial gradient
fill for your first fireworks burst. There is no one way to draw the fireworks bursts.
so experiment until you
develop a method you think is the most attractive. The ones I have drawn are a series of
overlapping, downward-cascading arcs - the gradient is applied to each of the
arcs individually... not as a group. This gives the burst a more realistic
appearance.
Go ahead and create your burst with the brush. Later we will want to convert our burst to a symbol BUT NOT NOW
- For the time being,
leave them as individual shapes. Select the Arrow tool, select your fireworks and then select
Edit > Copy (Ctrl+C).
This will copy the entire set of arcs. LOCK THIS LAYER. Create a New Layer, paste the shapes onto the new layer using
Edit > Paste
or Ctrl+V. Rename this layer Fireworks2. Why are we pasting this onto a
separate layer? Fireworks are not all the same color and we will want to
change the color of the fill. So, be sure to keep this layer unlocked for
now.
Step 10: You should now be on the Fireworks2 layer with the burst still selected. We
will change the swatch colors in the Color Mixer panel and the changes will
be reflected on this layer. How about #33cc00, #00ccff, and #ffff33? Make a few more copies and change the colors
- You could even make
some different shape bursts if you desire. We now have the basic scene set. Save this file so that you can work on it again.
Step 11: We are ready to convert one of our fireworks bursts to a
symbol. But this will be different from the ones we have created previously.
Select the Arrow tool and use it to select all fireworks bursts on a
layer. Just as a reminder, ALL layers except the one you are working on should
be locked.
Go to Insert > Convert to Symbol (F8). Now when the dialog open we will
select Movie Clip as the type, name the symbol (I named mine Fireworks1),
and click OK. Did you notice something different with this symbol? The shape
now has a blue outline. This marks it as a symbol and you will no longer be
able to edit the individual pieces.
We have to get inside the fireworks symbol to animate it. We can do
that by right-clicking on the fireworks and selecting Edit. Your screen
will change and you should have a blank stage. The area above
your stage is now titled Scene1 and Fireworks1. This lets you know that you
are one level deeper and you are now on the stage for your symbol only.
Step
12: The timeline should have only one layer. On the timeline, select the keyframe in frame 1, right-click, and select
“copy frame”. Go to frame 12, right-click, and select “paste frame”. Paste the keyframe again on frame 13.
This makes it easier to do the
second half of our shape tween.
Go back to frame 1. Click on the frame, use the Arrow tool and select
all of the shapes/fills on the stage.
Use the Free Transform Tool and scale the fireworks in the first frame
down until it is almost invisible. Select frames 1-12, go to the
Properties panel, select
Tween > Shape from
the dropdown.
Go to frame 1, copy the frame. Go to frame 24, paste the frame. Repeat this process and select frames 13-24, DO NOT SELECT FRAME 12.
Apply a shape tween as before.
Save your work. Click on the blue arrow in the upper left hand corner of
the stage and you will return to the main working area.
Step 13: We need to extend the length of the animation. So go to each layer, copy the first frame and then paste it in frame 48.
Step 14: After this simple step you need to animate the opacity of the fireworks burst, so that it will
fade in and out as it grows and shrinks at the same time. To do this we will
want to extend the timeline on the first fireworks layer, copy frame 1 to
frame 24, and copy it to frames 12 and 13.
Step 15: Go back to frame 1 and select the symbol for the fireworks burst. Since
the burst is so small the easiest thing to do is to make certain that all
layers EXCEPT the active layer are on is locked, and then drag your arrow tool across
the entire canvas. With the symbol selected look at the Properties tab. There is a dropdown
menu called “Color” and by default it should show “None”. Select “Alpha”,
before doing this make certain that you are in frame 1. A percentage slider
should now be visible. Move the slider to 0%.
Step 16: Go to frame 24, on Properties tab select Color > Alpha, 0%. Do the same thing for frames 12 and 13 BUT NOW set the sliders back to
100%. Right-click between frames 1 and 12 and choose “Create Motion Tween”.
Do
the same for frames 13 to 24.
Step
17: Copy the entire set of 24 frames, and paste in the same layer after the
first to extend it to fill all 48 frames. Now go back and take care of the other fireworks symbols that you made.
Experiment with them, making some of them with quicker bursts, some starting a
few frames later than the original, etc. You don’t want them to all explode
at the same time!
As a final touch, go to the Properties tab and, in the Color dropdown menu,
find a section called “Advanced”. Using this you can adjust the color of the bursts
without your having to make a whole set of new symbols. Just play and see
what happens!
And there we go! One scene with
repeating fireworks! This is a basic approach to a simple
animation, but it works every time and by following the tutorial to this
point you will have learned a great deal about scene construction in Flash.
Keep practicing and even try making your own scenes... then progress onto
more intermediate tutorials.