How to Make Free Flash Animations
Flash animations are often created for nothing more than the maker's personal entertainment. However, flash animations can play an important part in website design. When you go to a website and a short intro plays before the actual page displays on the screen, this intro is, more than likely, Flash. Learning Flash can be difficult for people who are not used to animation programs, and the applications that create Flash can be expensive. If you want to create easy Flash animations for free, a few online systems make it possible.
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Instructions
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Go to a free Flash movie-editing website such as GoAnimate and Dvolver (see Resources for links). Both site offer free, simple Flash animation systems. GoAnimate requires users to sign up for an account by entering an email address, username and password, but Dvolver requires no account.
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Open the online Flash movie-editors offered on the site by clicking the "Create," "Animate" or "MovieMaker" button. Select the "Movie Studio" or "Animation Studio" to get into the studio where you can design a Flash movie.
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Select a setting or a theme from the available choices in the program. The background or theme that you chose appears in the preview screen in the Flash movie-editor.
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Choose the number of characters for your Flash movie if prompted. When the character list appears, select the characters that you want to use in your movie from the list. Once a character appears in the preview screen, some online editors allow you to move the character by clicking on the figure and dragging it anywhere on the background.
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Add text in the provided text boxes when prompted, or select the "Text" tool from the program toolbar to bring up text boxes and then add text. Choose music from the list of musical selections provided and select actions for each character by clicking "Actions" and choosing from the action list.
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Preview the movie by clicking the "Preview" button. If the Flash animation looks right, click the "Save" button to save the animation to your computer.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have worked in graphics or animation programs and want to try your hand at Flash software, you can download one at cnet (see Resources.) While Flash software is not generally free, most of the programs on cnet do offer a free trial. The Flash animations created through the free trial of a Flash program, however, almost always display watermarks on the animation.
GoAnimate requires users to have Adobe Flash Player 10 installed on their computers (see Resources.)
