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Struggling learning Flash

I am decent at photoshop but when it comes to animation of any kind I am horrible. I am trying to make a Flash website (I did have a guy doing it for me but he bailed). There are a few things I am trying to do with this image, some I think I did correctly and some I have no idea where to start.

First I want the arrows to all zoom off in the direction that they are pointing, loop to the other side of the screen and come back and stop briefly where they are, flash, and keep doing that.

Second I would like for the two things of grass to wiggle back and forth.

Third I would like for the tan circles inside the blue circles to go in circles inside the blue circles. This one made my head spin.

I would like to just import the PSD but it comes up with an error message when I try. I have just been bringing over every file as a TIFF one by one.

I think I got number one mostly done. It zooms off the page and back on from the other side but I can't find a way to make it flash or get it to move the way I want to. I have been reading lots of tutorials but most of them just confuse me more. If someone could please teach me how to do these things it would be greatly appreciated, I will continue searching for my answer.

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best bet for importing is to save the elements into separate pngs. The transparency will be supported, and you'll be able to animate each part, whether it be the llama or the circles, individually.

The "techniques" you're trying to use are just tweens. Odds are yuo could make those circles in flash itself and incorporate a shape tween. A shape tween is done by animated a flash drawn shape, and not a symbol.

Here's a good tutorial for motion tweening. http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx/motiontween.htm
Motion tweening is used to animate symbols, which would be everything you import. Keep in mind, that before you can animate it, you need to covert each png/bitmap to a symbol. Directions for that is in the tutorial.

Also, to make life easier, animate each element on a separate layer. You can't animate two things in one motion tween, so you'll have to have a layer for each symbol.

Also, you said you're making a website with flash, or using flash to make a html website more fancy? There's a big difference, and if you're trying to do the first, its going to be tricky. Good luck
meg

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Thanks for the advice. My goal is to make it a flash site with very little html. I figured out how to get all the arrows the way I liked. For the circles I just moved them a little bit for each frame, it isn't as smooth as I would like but it is a step in the right direction, maybe playing with the frames per second should help. I haven't found a motion tween to make the grass wiggle the way I'd like, I could just make alot of screens of it with the sheer tool in photoshop but I am sure there is an easier way. I have been very certain to use as many layers as I can. Some other difficulties I am having is with the tools. I can't get the selection tools to work, I draw around an object but it doesn't select it. When I was first playing around with flash I could circle something to select it and it would get filled with dots to show it was selected, I can no longer get that to work. I also can't get the eraser tool to work (???). I figured that would be pretty basic but I tried to erase an object from a layer and while I held down the mouse button it looked like I was painting a thick white line but when I released the mouse nothing had changed.

Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, this was longer than I expected.

Ohh ya, one other problem I am having is with properly looping the animation. All my frames end at the exact same place but some take longer than others so the animation doesn't start again until the slow ones finish. Is there a way to let the faster ones keep going while the slow ones lag behind?

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Signature Suspended as it is in violation with the signature rules

here's a grass tutorial. a bit complex, but its cool, http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx/grass.htm

With the eraser, when you click it, there are options below it as to how you want to erase. I usually have the top one selected. Also make sure you have the right frame selected.

With the smoothness, you could play with the frame rate, but also try adding a motion tween. That usually smooths things. You could also try using onion skin, but I haven't done that in a long time. I'll play with that when I get back and see if I can help more.

To select something, can't you just click it? I don't get your select problems.

Hope I was atleast a little help.

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