Dynamic Text!

Targetting Movie Clips

Building a Basic Menu

I really enjoyed creating this project and hope to make another one but better. This was just really quick menu project to get the feel for it. It was all in Action Script 2.0.
First, to create this effect, you need to create the animation. Afterwards, you go to the end keyframe and then press F9 to open the Actions menu. Turn on Script Assist then go to Global Functions>Timeline Control>then double click Stop. You then name the layer by going to functions, then properties and type in a name for it. You then do this for multiple animtions on different layers. After that, you then create a new layer labeled "Menu". On this layer, you begin creating buttons. After creating the first text on the first keyframe for the first animation, you convert it to a symbol (button). You then press F9 for the Actions menu and instead of "Stop", double click "goto". You then make the type "Frame Label" and type in the name of the desired layer. Note that it was whatever you named it in the Properties. Now that you created the button, you can edit it by going to Edit Symbol and you'll see Up, Over, Down, and Hit. Now, the project before did not use the Hit option and all that does it make it easier to press the button by creating a rectangle around it. This determines the space of which you can hit the button. Now, you do this for each of the animations you created. That was pretty much how you created this project. It's so simple and so much fun. You can create a variety of other animations.

Creating A PLAY Button

Creating a Stop & Play button seemed difficult, but after doing it, it was relatively easy. It is all done in Action Script 2.0. First you had to create an actual animation before creating your button. After creating your animation, you create a new layer labeling it "Actions". You then bring up the "Action Script" and turn on the Script Assist. You then go to Global Functions>Timeline Control>then double click "stop". There should be an "a" over your blank keyframe on your Actions layer. After you complete all of this, you then create a play button by creating a shape, then right click>Convert to Symbol. You then select "Button" and name it. After creating that button, you go back to the Action Script and instead of clicking "stop", you double click "play". Now when you test it out, the button should start your animation. Now, for extra editing, you go to Edit then "Edit Symbols". This will then show you four things-Up, Over, Down, and Hit. The Up is when the button is just sitting on the stage, the Over is what the button will look like when the mouse is hovered over it, the Down is what it will look like when you click it, and the Hit defines an active area of the button. After editing your button, you should test your animation and see if everything works. I was very pleased with how mine came out. It was really enjoyable to be able to make something really simple, but extremely useful. I might just have to make another one later on.


Working with Text

The first animation was our introduction into text. We edited the text by adding a "Drop Shadow". Starting out, we had the angle at 45 degrees. Then we added another keyframe at about 35 on the timeline and changed the angle to about 115 degrees. After that, we created a "Classic Tween" and watched the drop shadow move. We then had to work with it on our own and Chris showed me how to make it move in a circular motion by just changing the angles from 45 to 0 and 115 to 360. I thought it looked neat, so I edited mine like that.

The second animation was another method of animating text. We basically broke up the text by pressing CTRL + B and then added another keyframe at about 35. You have to separate them by selecting them all together then right click to get the drop down menu. You then select "Distribute to Different Layers". If you want the text to go out then come together, you spread them out in the beginning then on the keyframe, you keep them together. If you want to keep them together then spread out, you do the opposite. Then you create a "Classic Tween" and that pretty much sums it up. However, you can reverse this motion by selecting all of the frames in the timeline and right clicking to see the drop down menu. You go to "Reverse Frames" and it flips them. This was fun to do and showed me some pretty useful tools I could use for other animations. It was very simple and easy to follow and duplicate.



The Ken Burns Effect

The Ken Burns Effect is a series of zooming in and out of images while fading in and out between images. It's an interesting editing style that is very easy to imitate. A lot of this project was just the use of Alpha and importing images to the stage. I don't think I made this as effective as I could've, but I think I just wanted to get the assignment done. Maybe I'll redo this one later on when I get better at it. I really like timing everything just right and seeing it all come together.