Flashing your Bits!

Weekly Flash features-Issue 1-Tutorials

Welcome to issue 1 of Flashing your Bits!
Flashing your Bits is a weekly news feature aiming to bring you all the good stuff from the Flash sections of the deviantART galleries, ranging from tutorials to fantastic Flash works, so keep your eyes peeled!

In issue 1, we shall dive in and bring out several of the awesome deviant-made tutorials and gather them all right here!

And so, to start, we shall feature...

Animation tutorials

Perhaps one of the easiest things to do with Flash, but one of the hardest things to pull off successfully, these following tutorials should hopefully help you along your way to becoming a great animator!

Drawing in Flash

Before you even start to animate, you're going to have to know how to draw in Flash. Now of course, not all animations are perfectly drawn, but are still extremely fun to watch, but it is still handy to know.


Animation techniques
[link] <-External link
There are several things you need to know about animation before you start, such as the techniques that are key to ALL animation. For example, you need to know the "squash and stretch" technique, or "anticipation". These work when you animate, let's say, someone jumping. The squash, or anticipation stage, is when the person goes back to ready for the jump, and when they jump, they will stretch outwards. This will be explained more in the actual tutorial though, so don't worry (which uses the basic "bouncing ball" animation)

Animating with Flash

If you're completely new to Flash, then this funny and helpful tutorial will help get you set up and become knowledgeable on the key elements of Flash. it will also guide you through animating simple things.

Other things
  
Some other important and useful things to know-Motion Tween and adding sound into your Flashes.

And now we've done that, now we move onto...

ActionScript tutorials

If you want to make your Flashes interactive and/or alot more fun, or make a game, or just want a simple play button, then Actionscript is the thing you need! The most recent version of Actionscript is Actionscript 3, however, I am aware that some people may still have earlier versions of Flash that use AS2, so I shall feature both lots of tutorials

Actionscript 2

Flash MX 2004 to Macromedia Flash 8(can also be used in later versions)

AS2 Preloader

Usually, if your Flash document is huge, it may take a while to load up properly once you put it up on the net. So, to combat this, you can make what's called a preloader, which is basically a loading bar before your animation, game or whatever you make. You can have more than just a simple bar though, you could put a simple, funny looping animation on the loading screen to keep people entertained whilst the viewer waits for the file to load!

Buttons

Buttons are perhaps one of the most important things needed in an interactive Flash document. They are powerful little beaties and can do a range of things varying from playing your movie to feeding your interactive pet They control the movement along the timeline.

Dress up games

We all know that dress up games can be fun, but they can also be easy to make yourself! Follow this simple tutorial to begin making your own dress up games. Of course, once you've got the basics, you can expand on this and make full blown character customisation games

Actionscript 3

Adobe Flash CS3 to Flash CS5 and above

AS3 Preloader

This does the same as the AS2 preloader, just the code is different for AS3

Buttons

Again, the same as AS2 buttons, just with different code for AS3.

Dress up games
[link]
Unfortunately, I haven't found any dress up tutorials for Actionscript 3 on deviantART, so this is an external link to one.

Conclusion

Of course, there are lots more things you can do with Flash than what's featured, but hopefully, this gives a little taster of the endless possibilities There are plenty more tutorials out there for you to dig up


Until next time!

`Gashu-Monsata