How to Shine a Light in Flash

You can add mood or drama to simple animations by introducing light into the scene. Not only can a light's color change the mood, the direction of the light can focus the viewer on a single object or character. You can shine a light in Flash using a few simple techniques.

Instructions

1. Sketch out your scene. Make sure to consider the light source. You can shine light from object in the scene itself or bring light from somewhere to the side of the stage. Sketch the light's shape and direction (if the light should follow a character, indicate that in your animation storyboards).

2. Draw the light beam shape with the pen tool on a separate layer in the timeline. Use a white fill and no stroke. Convert your light path to a movie clip (F8 and choose "Movie Clip" as the symbol type."

3. Select the movie clip and choose the "Overlay" blend mode in the Properties palette. The light will blend with the objects on underlying layers. Lower the alpha percentage ("Color" pulldown) to reduce the light intensity.

4. Double click on the movie clip. An editing window will open over the stage with the movie clip timeline. Choose "Soften Fill Edges" from the Modify menu Shape submenu. Click on the "Scene 1" button to return to the main timeline.

5. Add shadows to your illustration objects where the light falls across them. Add a new layer underneath the object layer and copy the main object shape to that layer (if the object is a symbol you will need to do this on the symbol timeline). Fill the shadow shape with black and soften the edges. Convert the shadow shape to a symbol and set the reduce the alpha so the shadow blends with objects underneath.

Tips & Warnings

• Older versions of Flash don't feature movie clip blend modes. You can mix color tint and alpha to achieve similar effects.