Flashing your Logo with a Beam of Light - Page 6

Part 6: The Sparkle: Wow, did I shine too much?

Okay! Everybody loves sparkles! Don't know why, but it gives an element of style to the logo. Fine, now use the same method to import the "ding.wav" file into Flash: FileImport, remember? Now, just like mine, if you want to add the sparkle to the most common corner (top left), you do it from bottom-right to top-left. It's maybe because it ends at the same spot as the sparkle, and gives the illusion of light. Right! Now for the sparkle...

Now, first, do the shine, but shine it until half of the logo. We don't want to complete it, because it should stay on the logo in order for the people to see it. To get the sparkle, go to FileOpen as Library. In the dialog box that appears, select "star.fla" that you moved into the folder. Click OK. You should get a new Library window with its contents grayed out. Make a new layer, name it "Star". Click on the Graphic Symbol "Shine", and drag an instance to the Stage. If you close the new Library, and open yours, you discover that the symbol has been copied to your Library. So it means the instance you dragged to the stage is referring to yours, not mine. So it is okay to close the library. Position the star to snap to the top-left corner of your logo. Scale it if you think it's too small. Now, note that it is wiser if you shine before you sparkle, agree? So, on the Star layer, drag frame 1 to somewhere around frame 10. Get rid of the extras behind. Insert a new keyframe 10 frames later (frame 20 now) and another one 5 frames later (frame 25 then). Click on frame 10, open the Effect panel (WindowPanelsEffect).

In the Effect drop-down menu, select Alpha. Drag the slider down to 0%. On frame 20, do the same with the value 85%, then, finally, on frame 25 with 75%. Right-click on frame 1 and choose Create Motion Tween. Do the same on frame 20. Press Enter on the keyboard and watch the whole thing roll! Now close the Effect panel.

Ah... the moment we've all been waiting for! Sound! Yah! A sparkle is nothing without the sound, right? Now import "ding.wav" into Flash. Look here: because of the speciality of the sound file, you can't put the frame immediately on frame 10. It needs to be put on frame 15 or so, because the sound only plays later. So insert a new layer called "Sparkle Sound", insert a keyframe on frame 15 and attach the sound using the Sound panel. Also don't forget to change the Sync to Stream! If you also want the sound for the shining, put it in another layer (like "light sound") because they are overlapping each other.

Enjoy!