Dynamic masking using the drawing API II

Dynamic masking using the drawing API II

In a previous tutorial (dynamic masking using the drawing API), I showed you how to create interesting masking effects using the drawing API. If you haven't seen it yet, please read the introduction section in order to get familiar with the drawing API and masking commands. I purposefully avoided to use the curveTo drawing command in the first tutorial as it is a tad more complicated to use than lineTo. However, while designing my new site I discovered quite an interesting application of this command to the dynamic masking method and this is the highly popular 'swoosh' masking effect. Here's an example:

The movie attaches a picture on stage, assigns a mask movie clip to it and draws some shapes inside to reveal a portion of the picture. Since the shapes are curved, we'll need some background on the curveTo command.