Morphing, Hints, Bitmap Tracing & Motion guides

The Flash Presentation:-

How it is done:-

There are 4 main effects in this flash:

1. Bitmap tracing
2. Morping objects
3. Adding hints
4. Motion guides

Let's start with the basics

Fist, make a new flash movie, draw a circle with no stroke (the outline), then make a new layer. On the new layer, draw an arrow, by making a rectangle, then a prefect square. roatate the square by 90 degrees, and cut it in half. Then join the two together to make an arrow.

On both layers, add another (non-keyframe) 5 frames (f5), then put a blank keyframe on the end (f7).

On the blank keyframe, get a silhouette of a plane, or the thing you want to animate - you can draw this, or get an image.

You are now set up for the 'complicated' bit.

Bitmap tracing

Bitmap tracing is vital in order to make a normal photo or graphic, 'morphable' on flash, it also allows you to edit the image in greater detail in flash.

If you have insufficient talent to draw the plane (like me), you probably can get one from google images. With this image, resize it, so it fits in the blue circle. While the image is selected, use the 'Modify > Trace bitmap...' Tool. For silhouettes, I use 'Colour threshold = 30, Minimum area = 30, Curve fit = Normal, Corner threshold = 30'. This usually works really well, but you can fiddle with the variables (remember = for colour threshold, 1 = perfect, 500 = about 2 colours, but with silhouettes, it doesnt really matter).

After tracing the bitmap, you can select the background and press 'delete'. If the silhouette is not the right colour, go to the properties menu, and change the fill colour.

Place the silhouette ontop of the circle (on the same layer as the arrow, in the blank keyframe).