How to Make Plants Grow in Illustrator CS3

You might know that Adobe Illustrator CS3 is a powerful drawing program, but did you know that it can create animations too? There's only one small catch. You can't preview your animations inside Illustrator. Try starting with a simple animation experiment, if this is your first foray into Illustrator animation. Make plants grow.

Instructions

1. Draw any plant. You could do the work yourself or you could save time by dragging the "Red Flower" symbol onto the stage. Delete the flower from the symbols palette and choose "Expand Instances" when it prompts you. You will now have a fully editable flower.

2. Use the group select tool to drag the green stem away from the red flower area. Select all of the red flower elements. Drag them back to the symbols palette to create a new, separate symbol (name it "Petals"). Separate the branches from the stem and make symbols from each object (you will have to reconnect the stem points after you cut off the branches).

3. Double click on Layer 1 in the layers palette and name it "Frame 1." Duplicate the layer "Frame 1" and rename it "Frame 2." Make sure "Frame 2" is on top of "Frame 1" (Illustrator creates animation frames based on each layer, beginning with the bottom layer). Continue to duplicate layers until you have twelve layers named (from bottom to top) "Frame 1" to
   "Frame 12."

4. Select all 12 layers and reduce their opacity to 50 percent. Go to "Frame 1" and delete everything but the stem. Hold down the "Option/Alt" key and click at the bottom of the stem with the scale tool and scale the object 30 percent. Repeat with "Frames 2 to 6," scaling the stem slightly less from the bottom (40 percent, 50 percent, and so on).

5. Proceed from "Frame 12" to "Frame 2," scaling the branches and flowers progressively smaller and repositioning each in relation to the stem. By "Frame 2" the objects should barely be visible. Select all 12 layers and return the opacity to 100 percent. Show and hide each layer in turn to double check the plant's growth at each stage.

6. Export your animation as an SWF file. Make sure the animation is set to "AlI Layers to SWF Frames." Preview your animation with Flash Player or load it into your browser.