Step Two, Make a new layer, put g_circle in that layer, change the color.

To make a new layer, go Insert>new layer. I never do it like that. Notice in the timeline, right below the word “red” (your layer name), there is a folder icon on the left hand side. If you click on that, it makes a new layer. That’s what I do. That is a little quicker.

Name the new layer green. Open the library and drag g_circle to the stage. After you drag
it to the stage, you should see a black little dot in the green layer. If you see a white little dot in the green layer, this means that you put g_circle in the red layer. If that is the case, go,,,Edit>Cut then
click on the blank keyframe in the green layer, then go....Edit>paste in place.

We’re in business.

Now, select your g_circle that is in the green layer, and in the property inspector, go to the color indicator, select tint and change the color of your g_circle to green.

Do ya see what’s going on? You should be able to do the rest by your self. Make two more layers. Call one blue, and the other yellow. Drag g_circle into each layer and give them the appropriate colors.

Very Good. We’re almost there.

In the your layers, you should see four layers, all with different names, red, blue, yellow and green. And in each layer you see little black dots. Those are keyframes. If any of those dots are white, that means nothing is in the layer.

How do you Know What is in What layer?

Take the black arrow tool and click away from everything so nothing is selected. Now, click on one of your circles. Notice that layer turns black. This is how you can tell what is on what layer.

Now, click away to deselect again. Click on one of your keyframes in the layers. Notice that whatever keyframe you clicked on, that circle becomes selected on the stage. You may say, “so what?” Well , you will be in situations where you have 30 layers and 300 frames and you are trying to figure out what is what. This is how you figure it out.

When you click on an object, its layer turns black. When you click on a keyframe, the object associated with the keyframe becomes selected. This is a good thing to know.

Span Based Selection,,,,In the preferences menu.

We are going to change the way we select and move around keyframes. Every time Macromedia comes out with a new version of flash, they change the way you select frames. In the preferences, you can select Span Based Selection. I find this the best and easiest way to do it.

On the pc, go to Edit> preferences. Find Span Based Selection. Click the little box.
On the Mac, go to Flash Professional> preferences and do the same as above.

Creating the basic animation.

Let’s see our animation. There are two worlds in flash. We work in a file format called the ,”fla” file. We publish the , “swf” file. The swf file is the file that the world sees on the internet. Think of the swf as you would a jpg file. If you use PhotoShop, you know that you can’t put a psd file on your web page, you make it a jpeg file. In flash you make it a swf file.

To make a swf file , first save you file to the desktop. I’m going to call my file, “circle colors.”

Now that you’ve saved your file, go Control>Test Movie. This is called Test Movie mode. You are now seeing a preview of your publication. Whenever you test your movie, you create or update your swf file. If you look on the desktop, you see two files, one is a fla, the other is a swf. Where ever you save your fla, that’s where the swf is saved.

Now we are going to play with time. You are a Flash Magician.

We have these four little circles on the screen. Let’s animate them so that only one shows up at a time. We get this done by adding frames to the timeline, and then dragging keyframes and “static” frames around. This process determines what shows up when.

We want to make it so that our four circles show up for 40 frames in the timeline. Then, we want to manipulate our layers in the following fashion;

If we do this, then our job is done. Let’s Go.

Step One

To add 40 frames to all layers at the same time, click on the “1” in the timeline. It looks like a “1.” Yes that’s right, it looks like a “1.” Click on the 1.

Step Two

Now,,,,,hold down the “F5” key on the keybroad and watch those frames grow to frame 40.
“f5” adds frames, "shift f5" removes frames.

Step Three

Now you see gray bars in each layer between frames 1 and 40. Notice the keyframe in frame on of each layer. And notice the little white rectangle in each layer in frame 40. The little white rectangle is called a static frame. KeyFrames and StaticFrames are dragable.  Drag the keyframes and static frames around as such;

That’s it folks. Now test your movie and watch what happens.

To test your movie, go.....Control>Test Movie.

What you should see is one circle of each color showing up at a different time in the movie. It’s not going to get you a job at Disney, but you’ve learned to;

Manipulate the color of a graphic symbol
Insert Layers
Name layers
Select objects via selecting keyframes
Select keyFrames by clicking on objects
Add Frames to the timeline
Drag keyframes and static Frames
Publish a Swf file and test a movie.

Good Job.