Animation with Multiple Layers

This will be your greatest project so far! In frame by frame animation, what do you do if you want to use one image for many frames? Do you have to draw the background in each frame? The answer is "no," if you use layers to help you. Here's how you do it:

1. Draw or import your background image.

2. Decide how many frames you wish your image to last. If you want your background to last fifty frames, then click in frame 50 and then click Insert > Timeline > Keyframe. NOTE: use Keyframe, not blank Keyframe

3. Next, go to Insert > Timeline > Layer.

4. In this new layer, go about the business of drawing your animation as you did with blank keyframes in the last couple of Flash projects.

5. Lock your background layer (and any others as you finish them), by clicking on the little padlock icon in the layers window. Locking your layers keeps you from accidentally disturbing them. A project can become quite complicated when you start to have more than a few layers.

I have made a five minunte video of how to do this if you need clarification.

Project Guidelines

For this project, you will need to use what you have learned to create a multilayered Flash project that tells a short story. It should have at least five layers and be at least fifty frames in length.

I don't want you to make random images, it needs to tell a story. You may incorporate images from the web.

If it is do hard for you to come up with your own story, you may choose a story from a book or movie and and use Flash to interpret the story.

You must also include some sort of stretch and squash animation (not of a ball).

This project must be complete and signed off by Friday of this week.



a couple of Frey's students