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Description
Tutorial 001 : "How to Make Flash Behave Like Traditional Cells"

This tutorial is intended for traditional animators who want to draw their animations frame by frame using Flash.

While such technique will not bound to last in the digital world, this tutorial can help provide the ground needed to understand Flash from a traditional point of view.

So, there will be no "Tween" functions, "Properties", and "Library" managements involved.

That makes this tutorial very basic.

Before we begin, there is one thing that needs to be cleared up first.

Ever since Photoshop was born, the concept of layers have been greatly associated with "pages" that we can draw upon.

This is very true in Photoshop and Illustrator or any other static imaging software, but not so in Flash.

Layers in Flash serve more for the purpose of positioning the drawings (top, bottom, overlay, underlay, alpha, and so on).

So, we can't really draw on layers in Flash. We can only insert empty pages on layers; only then we can draw (on the empty pages).
This is done by inserting a blank keyframe in the timeline where the layer is on. One blank keyframe is worth a single paper in the real world.

This is where the difference (big difference) lies with Photoshop or Illustrator, where one layer is one paper. In Flash one layer can contain many papers.

This information alone should be enough to make Flash a more traditional-animator-friendly.

But if you want something more "visual", then this semi-interactive video tutorial is definitely for you.

Enjoy!

I must admit though, the timeline interface is a little bit odd and especially daunting for beginners. That, plus the layer thing.

- Student#1: "What?! You have to highlight the frame first, then hold control, and then click and drag the frame just to shorten the length of it?"
- Teacher: "Yes."
- Student#2: "I clicked and dragged but the frame just won't move! What in the world is going on?!"
- Teacher: "No, you have to highlight it first."
- Student#2: "Okay, well, now it's making a new keyframe everytime I drag the highlighted frame."
- Student#1: "Yeah, same here."
- Teacher: "Did you hold control (CTRL) while dragging it?"
- Student#3: "YARRG!!!! I've been holding and control-ling myself ever since this whole dang thing started!!" *gnawing fingernails*

Description
Tutorial 001 : "How to Make Flash Behave Like Traditional Cells"

This tutorial is intended for traditional animators who want to draw their animations frame by frame using Flash.

While such technique will not bound to last in the digital world, this tutorial can help provide the ground needed to understand Flash from a traditional point of view.

So, there will be no "Tween" functions, "Properties", and "Library" managements involved.

That makes this tutorial very basic.

Before we begin, there is one thing that needs to be cleared up first.

Ever since Photoshop was born, the concept of layers have been greatly associated with "pages" that we can draw upon.

This is very true in Photoshop and Illustrator or any other static imaging software, but not so in Flash.

Layers in Flash serve more for the purpose of positioning the drawings (top, bottom, overlay, underlay, alpha, and so on).

So, we can't really draw on layers in Flash. We can only insert empty pages on layers; only then we can draw (on the empty pages).
This is done by inserting a blank keyframe in the timeline where the layer is on. One blank keyframe is worth a single paper in the real world.

This is where the difference (big difference) lies with Photoshop or Illustrator, where one layer is one paper. In Flash one layer can contain many papers.

This information alone should be enough to make Flash a more traditional-animator-friendly.

But if you want something more "visual", then this semi-interactive video tutorial is definitely for you.

Enjoy!

I must admit though, the timeline interface is a little bit odd and especially daunting for beginners. That, plus the layer thing.

- Student#1: "What?! You have to highlight the frame first, then hold control, and then click and drag the frame just to shorten the length of it?"
- Teacher: "Yes."
- Student#2: "I clicked and dragged but the frame just won't move! What in the world is going on?!"
- Teacher: "No, you have to highlight it first."
- Student#2: "Okay, well, now it's making a new keyframe everytime I drag the highlighted frame."
- Student#1: "Yeah, same here."
- Teacher: "Did you hold control (CTRL) while dragging it?"
- Student#3: "YARRG!!!! I've been holding and control-ling myself ever since this whole dang thing started!!" *gnawing fingernails*