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Macromedia Flash Work Practices
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By Steve Happ
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I thought I might put together some of my work practices. Theseare the steps I put in place to facilitate a good efficient workflow in Flash. These are my tips. I have found they have workedfor me. It¡¯s a matter of learning these practices so that you donot think about it. Just like driving a car. Then you canconcentrate on being creative and working efficiently andquickly within Flash without having to worry about whether youare on the right layer or you have grabbed the wrong Graphic oryou have 2 objects to tween on the same layer and you arescratching your head wondering why the tween won¡¯t work.
Create A Graphic. The first thing you do is to create a graphicin Flash. Say you are going to make a circle. Draw the circle,then go to the select arrow tool and drag around the wholecircle including the outline. If you click on the circle toselect it, 9 times out of 10 you will select only the fillinside and leave out the outline circle. And then wonder whyyour tween won¡¯t work. Doh!
So rule number 1 is :
USE THE ARROW SELECTION TOOL TO DRAG SELECT THE WHOLE OBJECT.
Then when you have got the drawn item selected by draggingaround it. Hit Key F8 (Convert to symbol) and Tick the GraphicRadio Button and name it. I usually use the suffix _gr after agraphic, just so I know that it is a graphic. If I am making abutton, I use _btn and a Movieclip I use _mc. e.g. Graphic = redcircle_gr Button == stop_btn MovieClip = bigCar_mc
Now back to where I was before I went off on a tangent. I hitkey F8 to convert the drawing to a graphic. Drawings bythemselves are useless. You can¡¯t do anything with them , youcan¡¯t tween or control with programming (Actionscript in Flash).So make sure you create either a Graphic or a Movieclip so thatit is usable.
Ok. So now we have created a greenball_gr and it is on its ownlayer. Make sure that you have one object per layer. If we aregoing to tween them later, the tweens won¡¯t work unless there isonly one Graphic object per layer. If you have two or more itjust won¡¯t work. !!111!!!
So , lets tween our little ball. We want to move it across thescreen. Click on frame 20 and hit key F6 (Insert -> Keyframe).Now move the ball on frame 20. You should have a keyframe onframe 1 and frame 20. We are going to tween or move the ballbetween frame 1 and 20. Right click on a frame , say frame 10,between the keyframes and select ¡°Create Motion Tween¡±. Youshould have an arrow going from frame 1 to frame 20 on yourtimeline on layer 1. Now hit enter Key and it will move acrossthe Stage. Flash. That is what is meant by tweening. Now for thenext step which is very important. Double click on your layername and rename the layer, Call it Green ball or something thatlets you know what you are doing on that frame when you comeback later and have forgotten what everything is doing.
AND, now for the most important work practice in Flash afterusing the arrow selection tool to select and name your Graphicis ¡ taaa daaah¡
LOCK YOUR LAYERS
That¡¯s right folks, Lock your layers. Click on the dot under thelock symbol on your layer and lock it. Why do that ? I hear yousay. Well. In flash it gets a bit messy with heaps of layers, soif you lock all the other layers than the one you are currentlyworking on, then you don¡¯t go selecting all the wrong bits ofother Graphics. They are all locked so they can¡¯t be selectedand you are safe working on that particular object on thatparticular layer only.
Now for our next layer. Create another layer in Flash and nameit before we do anything else. Let¡¯s call it red square. Makesure that your green circle layer is locked before you doanything else !!11!!
Draw a red square on our new layer. Drag select the whole objectusing the SELECTION TOOL, and hit key (which key ?) F8. Tick theGraphic radio box and name it redSquare_gr. Click on frame 20 ,redsquare layer and hit the key to make a keyframe. Which keywas that again ? Remember these keys , they are very important.F6.
Revision Time F8 ¨C Convert to Symbol F6 ¨C Insert A Keyframe
But I digress, again! Now where were we? Oh yeah. We had justclicked on frame 20 and inserted a keyframe. Now move the redsquare Graphic on frame 20 to where we want it to be. Is theGreen Circle in the way? Well hide it by clicking on the dotunder the eye symbol in the layers palette. Doing that in Flashwill make the layer invisible so that other object don¡¯t get inthe way and you can see what you are doing properly on the layeryou are working on.
Right click on somewhere between frames 1 and 20 on the redsquare layer and select ¡°Create Motion Tween¡±. Hit Enter key tosee it run. They both should move independently. If they don¡¯t,start again and make sure you have all the steps correct. Followthe instructions to the letter and practice the steps until youdon¡¯t have to think about it. Flash Work Practices must beingrained so you don¡¯t think about them.
That can be rule number the next.
HIDE THE LAYERS THAT YOU ARE NOT WORKING ON.
Summary
So to reiterate everything I have said so far. Make sure thatyou use the drag select tool to select your objects and makethem into Graphics or a Movieclips. Use the Keystroke functionssuch as F6, F8, F5 etc rather than using the mouse and selectingmenu items. The key shortcuts are heaps faster and moreprofessional. Lamers only use menu items for common commands.Make sure that you only have one object per layer. Lock yourlayers that you are not working on. Hide the layers you are notworking on so that you can see what you are doing on the layeryou are working on.
MovieClips
That is it for Graphic objects. When it comes to MovieClips inflash it is pretty similar. Let me go through a process ofcreating a movieclip in flash.
Step the first. Make a separate layer and name it car. Draw acar on that layer. Make sure all your other layers are locked.After you have drawn your car, drag select the whole lot and hitkey F8 . Tick RadioBox ¡°MovieClip¡±. And name it car_mc. Clickok. When you are taken back to the timeline, make sure that yourmovieclip is selected and open your Properties window (I alwayshave my properties window open). In the Instance name textbox,give the MovieClip an instance name. Type in ¡°mycar_mc¡±. This isvery important that you give your MovieClips an instance name ,otherwise you will not be able to control them withActionscript. They are useless unless they have an instancename, they are in a vacuum, unusable, a waste of space.
So rule the number the very next..
GIVE YOUR MOVIECLIPS AN INSTANCE NAME STRAIGHT AWAY.
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