How to Make Objects Disappear in Flash CS3

Making objects disappear (or appear from nowhere) is one of the most basic animation techniques. You can use it for web banners, cartoon titles, or special animation effects. If you are just learning how to animate with Flash CS3, try making something disappear to help understand the animation and tweening process.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Open Flash animation. Add a new layer to the animation timeline for the disappearing object. Create the object with any of Flash's shape, paint or type tools (you can also import it from a graphics program) and make sure it's placed on the new animation layer.

2. Choose "Convert to Symbol" from the Modify menu to change the animation element to a symbol. Set the symbol property to "Movie Clip." Movie clips allow you to animate an element's properties.

3. Click inside any frame further down the timeline (Frame 10 should do just fine for this example). Type F6 to convert the frame to a keyframe (it will have a black dot just like Frame 1). Keyframes contain elements' basic states used as reference points for animation changes.

4. Select any frames on the timeline between the two keyframes and choose "Create Motion Tween" from the Insert Menu Timeline submenu. An arrow will appear in the empty frames connecting the two keyframes.

5. Make the object in the final keyframe the active object. You will know it's selected because you will see the Movie Clip icon in the Properties palette. Choose "Alpha" from the Properties palette's Color pulldown menu. Change the alpha setting to "0 Percent."

6. Choose "Rewind" and then "Play" from the Control menu. Your object will gradually disappear.

Tips & Warnings

• To make an invisible object appear, set the alpha to "0" in the first frame and "100" in the last frame.