How to Make Objects Disappear in Flash

Flash animators can become magicians by making objects appear and disappear at will. At first thought, this might seem easy. Create a keyframe and remove the object from the stage (or add a new object). Your object would disappear, but it would be awfully abrupt. Your animation would look more smooth if you use Flash's tweening capabilities to make the object simply fade away.

Instructions

1. Drag your object(s) onto the stage. Make sure it's positioned properly.

2. Change your object to a movie clip. Choose "Convert to Symbol" from the Modify menu (F8) and check the "Movie Clip" option. The graphic will become a single object that you can manipulate with effects you couldn't apply to other graphics.

3. Extend the timeline. Decide how many frames you want to extend the animation across. The default playback speed is 12 frames per second, so adding 12 frames to the timeline would animate the disappearance over a full second. Select the frame number in the timeline and choose "Frames" from the Insert menu Timeline submenu (F5).

4. Convert the last frame to a keyframe. Select the last frame in the timeline and choose "Keyframe" from the Insert menu Timeline submenu (F6). A black dot will appear in the frame, indicating that some change has occurred between this and the previous frame.

5. Click on the movie clip in the keyframe (make sure the keyframe is the active frame in the timeline). Open the "Property Inspector Color" pulldown menu and select "Alpha." Drag the slider until the alpha is "0." The movie clip will disappear.

6. Select all the frames in the layer and choose "Create Motion Tween" from the Insert menu Timeline submenu. An arrow will appear between the first and last keyframes.