Flash!

I dabbled with Flash today - I found that even though I was only trying to do something simple and I had been to the Flash workshop the previous week, I still couldn't get my bird to fly! I had to, yet again, ask one the I.T technicians to help and once he left me to it I was on a roll! I dont know if i over did it on the bird front-I originally just wanted to animate one bird flying across the screen, but for a bit of practice I ended up animating 5. What I did was create 3 birds in different positions using Illustrator, as I learnt you cant use tweens with pixels meaning I couldn't just import my original photographs into Flash. I then converted them to symbols. I then had to create a blank symbol to put my bird images onto. I had to create BLANK keyframes for each bird and then use a tool called the 'onion layer' to make my keyframes see through so I could position each bird in the correct place over each other. Then you save this symbol which is now animated to look as if it is flying and drag it onto the stage. Then, using keyframes, you can move this animated bird over the screen so it looks like is actually flying somewhere and not just statically moving its wings. To create the movement I had to add a motion tween on the timeline. I repeated this technique for each bird, adjusting the size and the speed in which they fly across the screen to give some kind of perspective.

Although I had to ask for help, I'm still pleased with myself for managing to carry on going once the I.T technician left. I think that once I can get my head around Flash (hopefully the second workshop next week will help) I will find it a really valuable and practical tool. I chose not to compile my whole animation in Flash because as my knowledge of it is still pretty limited I think it would have taken up too much time and I wouldn't be able to stick to the deadline. 

flying bird using Flash from holly raper on Vimeo.