How to Make a Stick Man Flash Movie
Because Flash is such an incredibly versatile and complex program, animation can be equally versatile and complex, or it can be very simple. The two primary methods of animating in Flash are frame-by-frame animation and animating through motion tweens. Both are easy to do, but for a simple animation with stick figures and the like, frame-by-frame animation is probably the best way to go. Animating frame by frame in Flash takes time and patience but can yield good-quality results.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Click on the oval tool on the toolbar. If it is not visible, click and hold on the rectangle tool on the toolbar until you receive a fly-out toolbar which will include the oval tool. Now click and drag a circle on the stage to represent the stick man's head. You can change the fill color for the head by selecting it with your mouse and pressing the "fill color" button at the bottom of the toolbar to select a color from the palate.
-
2
Click on the line tool on the toolbar. Click and drag on the stage to draw the stick man's torso, arms and legs.
-
-
3
Right click on the time line under frame 2 and choose "Insert keyframe" from the drop-down menu. Now, using the selection tool (press V on your keyboard), click on the arms, legs and hands of the stick man to move them slightly. The default frames per second in Flash is 24, which means that frame 2 where you are now is happening 1/24th of a second after the starting position, so your changes to the arms/legs position should not be very large at all.
-
4
Right click on the time line under frame 3 and choose "insert keyframe" from the drop-down menu. Again, move your stick figure's arms, legs and head slightly as necessary.
-
5
Continue adding keyframes as above and moving your stick figure as needed. Test your movie by pressing Ctrl+Enter to check your progress.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
If the going seems too slow at the default 24 frames per second you can do one of the following:
1. Change the frames per second for your movie in the Properties Inspector panel in Flash. Lowering the FPS to something closer to 12 will make the animation process go much more quickly for this type of project
2. Instead of adding a keyframe at every frame, you can just add keyframes and change the position of your stick figure at every other frame (1,3,5,7,9, etc.) or even every third frame. With the movie playing at 24 frames per second, the naked eye is not likely to notice the lack of activity on the skipped frames--your animation will still be smooth.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images
