Building a Custom Cursor in Flash 5 - Page 4

Creating the Cursor (con't)

Step 1.2 (optional) : Animating the Blinker Pointers

Next we want to animate the blinker pointer. To do this we need to create a timeline (movie clip) for it animation. Choose Insert > New Symbol, select the movie clip option and name it "Blinker MC".

Now open the library (Ctrl-L) and drag an instance of the graphic symbol "blinker" onto the stage. You will notice that you will have a keyframe in frame one. To create the blinking effect we need to also create a keyframe on frames 10 and 20. The best way to do this is to copy frame 1 and paste it into the frames. To do this select frame 1, choose Edit > Copy Frames then select frame 10 and choose Edit > Paste Frames. Repeat for frame 20. This way the pointer will be perfectly positioned.

The only thing left to do is modify the alpha value of the symbol in frame 1 and 20 to equal 0%. The image in frame 10 should remain at 100%. Now create a motion tween between the keyframes. Your timeline should now look something like this: