Animation and Loops - Page 2

Animationd and Loops

First, I created my continuous loop animation in the form of a Red Box that moved across the screen:

The key to this the placing the animation in it's own movie clip (MC). This will allow it to run independantly of the main timeline which means if the main timeline is stopped, the movie clip can keep playing.

So let's build it! Rename the layer to contain the MC "Red Box". Draw a red square on stage, select it and press F8 (or choose Insert > Convert to Symbol.. to convert it to a symbol. When the Dialog box appears give the symbol a name and select the Movie Clip option. Once you click OK the MC's timeline will appear (this is different to the Main Timeline) and you will have a red box on the stage.

What we want to do now is animate the box, but before we can do that we need to turn the box into a graphic symbol. To do this, select the box and press F8 like before, but this time select the Graphic Symbol. Once you click OK, the red square before you will now be a graphic symbol. This conversion process will enable to you "Motion Tween" the object.

Now let's look at the timeline of the Movie Clip. Currently you will only have one active frame (in frame 1). To animate the red square, click on frame 30 and press F6 (or choose Insert > Key Frame). Now while frame 30 is selected, move your Red Square the finishing point of your animation. In this example it's simply on the other side of the stage. Your timeline should now look something like this.

When the movie clip plays the playhead will reach frame 30 and in the absence of any stop action, the MC will automatically loop back to frame 1. That's it for the looping, now let's look at the main timeline.