Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

I assume you're talking about reflections on the surface of the car? If so, you'll want to look into masking. Masking allows you to create a 'window' where the only parts you can see are those within that 'window'. In this case, make the mask the same shape as the body of the car (or used several for the different sides and surfaces of the car) then animated the light flashes going by. That way the light effects will only show up on the car.

At 1/3/11 09:10 PM, LuffyWaffle wrote: for example, when a character faces to the right then they flip it to the left,but its still the same drawing how do you do that?

Select what you want to flip. Modify > Transform > Flip Horizontally.

This is also possibly with the transform tool.

So just tween the mouth graphics to fit the longer sounds.

There's also a technique of snapping animation to vowel sounds and easing to consonants.

At 12/16/10 09:12 PM, Krimmy-DJ wrote: thanks that loop was driving me crazy i thought i couldn't turn it off but i use movie clips so i gotta start getting into the habit of using graphic symbols

You can also change MCs into Graphics (or Buttons) easily, there's a dropdown in the properties window when you select the object.

At 12/16/10 08:23 PM, Krimmy-DJ wrote: Crap i just complicated one scene. Now i gotta do a lot of math and know exactly how many frames i have to put in certain parts. I was looking for a easier way to do this.

If you used a graphic instead of a movie clip, you can actually just change the graphic to Single Frame rather than Play Once or Loop (?) during the tween, thereby pausing the animation while you pan the scene. This setting is in the properties panel/window.

In the future, it's best to plan out your 'camera' movements ahead of time, and animate to them accordingly.

At 12/11/10 10:54 PM, Sacros wrote: BTW regarding what tom said about new copyright policies, do you know if a blurred pic can still be claimed by the author, even if you cant tell whats in the pic? say i use mona lisa in my movie but i blur it so nobody can tell its more than a godamn square, is that ok or can my ass be sued?

The Mona Lisa is in the public domain. But more to the point, technically you can't use an image like that, since even blurring it is still a derivative of the original work. However, if you make it a low enough quality no one will try and claim copyright violation damages as long as you don't go commercial with the animation.

Flash 8 and beyond has several filters that can be applied to Movie Clips and Buttons. If you have a background MC, select it and look on the properties panel for Filters. You can add blurring, shadows, and a few others.

These filters are both stackable and tweenable. Just tween the background like normal and change the values of the filters.

At 12/4/10 10:13 PM, Ragger wrote:

At 12/4/10 10:11 PM, th1rt3en wrote: Think of it like this: a keyframe in a tween represents a start/stop location of the movement.

Thanks! Now what do I do about the leaves?

Leaves seem fine. You may want to put them on separate layers and move them independently. Or read up on using (classic) motion guides to give them a more freeform movement.

This is just a simple back and forth movement, you shouldn't be using Reverse Frames at all.

Firstly, make the head ONE symbol, just one head graphic or movie clip.
Place head on layer, make 3 key frames
The middle key frame, move the head symbol to where you want to have it move to
Create classic tweens between the key frames

Think of it like this: a keyframe in a tween represents a start/stop location of the movement.

At 11/13/10 01:52 AM, KingGostly wrote: I hope this is something people come across sometimes. But the fill tool in CS4 seems to always want to fill the entire stage whenever I try to fill in a certain shape. I tried locking the background, but whenever I do that, the fill doesn't show up at all. Any ideas?

Is the object you're trying to fill entirely enclosed? Otherwise, you may need to turn on gap-filling, which is an option in the Properties window.

Classic tweens have their own type of custom easing that doesn't use the motion editor. If you select a frame with a classic tween and look in the properties panel for Easing, you'll see a button you can click that will bring up the custom easing graph.

This sometimes happens. Just select a few (or a chunk) of them at a time. Sometimes you'll get enough to fix the issue and can do the rest in one selection.

To put it simply, masking is like making a window on the frame and seeing only the parts of an image that move into that window's view.

When you make a mask you'll (initially) have two layers: the top, which will be the "window", and the bottom, which will be the image. (the bottom can also consist of more than one layer, but there will always be one "window" layer per mask.)

On the top layer you'll make a fill, or use a symbol. The shape you've used on this layer will be the area that we can see of the bottom layers. The fill/symbol that you used in the top layer will not be seen at all. You can treat either of these like normal layers with tweens, fbf, or what have you.

Clock movies tend to use masking for making the clock-faces appear as if they're turning around the clock's body.

At 10/16/10 09:43 PM, FallowerOfHank wrote: I am using Adobe Flash CS5, but Its still new to me. I gots some questions!

How do I make objects fade?

Is there an alternative to publishing picture previews? It won't let me take pics on the actual thing...

How do I make music stop automatically at a certain moment?

How do I loop the music?

And how do I make preloaders?

Keep in mind that this is not Macromedia. This is Adobe Flash CS5! Please help me out!

Also, I need a set of sprites... that is if you'll help me out...

Fade: In the properties panel for an object, there's a section called Color Effect. Select Alpha as the style and drop the value to 0. Alpha is the object's translucency.

Export Pics: Don't know what you mean here, but I'll point you to File > Export.

Stop Music: Easiest way is to set the music to Stream in the properties panel (not Event or Start) after selecting a frame with the music on it. This will keep the music synced with the timeline. Just find where you want the music to stop in the timeline and put a blank keyframe on it.

Loop Music: Also in the properties panel there are Repeat options.

Preloaders: If you can't loop music, you probably can't make a preloader. Look for a free one, NG has them.

CS5: These answers are all pretty much the same from Flash MX through CS5, FYI.

Sprites: Google

I think you can actually force the file to resize when uploading, since it makes you enter the file width and height. You just need to make sure the numbers you input are still in the aspect ratio, or at least close to it.

At 9/21/10 05:12 PM, biozombiex wrote: I use Graphics , but I only use them for sprites.
And it should work even if it's is a graphic your not doing something correctly I presume.
Might want to relearn the fundamentals of tweening.

At point A . make it your starting position. (frame 1)
At point B . make it your end position.(frame 12)
Right click in between the frames and select motion tween.
Whatever your tweening should now glide from point A to point B

simple.

CS5 has two types of tweens: Motion Tween and Classic Tween.

For the above, you want a classic tween. For a normal motion tween do the following:

1) Create a layer with just the symbol you want animated on it
2) Extend the frame out in the timeline (no need to make a 2nd keyframe)
3) Right click on a frame in that layer and select Create Motion Tween
This should turn the layer blue with NO arrow/line in it
4) Click on a frame in the layer where you want the end of the animation to be
5) Select the symbol on the timeline and move it
If successful, this will create a Motion Guide Line in the layer, showing you how the tween moves. This is editable like a line (e.g. bending it to make a curve)

I personally stick with Classic Tweens because I find the custom easing graph more efficient than the Motion Editor.

I think I've seen a fix to this glitch before; it was a while ago though so I'll try to remember. I think it was that you have to flip the symbol on the timeline (mirror horizontally or vertically) then go into the symbol and paintbrush will work. Then, when done, go back to the main timeline and flip it back.

Hope that's right

My mistake, I read too quickly, it looks like you're already doing that.

So try this instead: Place your bitmap-filled animation in a symbol. Then duplicate that symbol and change the bitmap fills to solid color fills with alpha/opacity. place these two symbols on the timeline with the solid fill symbol on an upper layer and make sure they're aligned.

You should be able to have a green tint over a bitmap texture.

There's actually an option for a bitmap fill, which will allow you to use the paint bucket (or any fill) tool with bitmaps instead of solid colors/gradients.

Best thing to do is to size a rectangle outline (no fill) the same as your canvas, place it on the top layer of your movie, and turn that layer into a guide layer. This will make your rectangle outline not show up when exporting the flash.

You can size the rectangle exactly by using the match size tool in the align window.

CS4 has two types of tweens: Motion Tween and Classic Motion Tween

Classic is the old style, where you place two key frames of start and stop positions and place a tween between them.

The new one turns the layer (up until the next keyframe) into a tween and the object can be moved at different places on the layer, while essentially keeping a motion guide.

One thing you could do is look into parallax effects. Like moving the foreground objects faster than the background ones. This could add to the illusion of 3D and maybe mask some of the animation if you feel your perspectively-drawn background isn't strong enough of an effect.

If you want him to drop something you're going to have to just animate that yourself.

But If you want to stop a looping Graphic you can easily make a new keyframe at the point you want it to stop, select the Graphic and in the properties menu there's a dropdown that contains: Loop, Play Once, Single Frame, just select single frame and it wont be looping anymore.

For a Movie Clip, this runs independently of the main timeline so you'd have to stop it with ActionScript code.

But basically, what you need to do, is make a new keyframe at the point you want him to stop, draw him in a new symbol or on the main timeline, animate him dropping the object, then use the looping walk cycle to have him walk away.

Select the frame with the audio and go to the properties menu. Select "Stream" from the Sync drop down menu. This will ensure that the audio stays synced on export.

1) Import the sound/music/audio
2) Create a new layer and select the frame where you want the audio to play
3) In the properties window, select the audio file from the drop down menu (or drag and drop the file from the library to the canvas)
4) If you want the sound to sync with the animation (i.e. always match what's animated) set it to stream in the properties menu

I assume by black and white you want a grayscale effect. If so, you should be able to use the adjust color filters for movie clips.

If you can put all of the movie's frames into a single movie clip and then adjust color, you should be able to get this effect.

When you select a frame with audio, there will be an edit button in the properties window near the name of the audio. When you click this a box with two timelines (left and right speakers) will come up. In this editor, you can create new points on each timeline that can be set to different volumes (the vertical axis) on certain frames (the horizontal axis). There's even a notch between the two boxes that can let you adjust the start and stop points of the audio file.

So to fade out, create a new point on the top of each box at the time/frame you want to start the fade out. Then create a second point at the bottom of each box at the time/frame you want the music to be silent.

If you're using the custom easing graph (or no easing at all) you can insert a keyframe in the middle of the tween and it will correctly split the tween+easing into two tweens. From that point you can move the disjointed limbs into place. Repeat this process on the split tweens until the movement is close enough to have the limbs look disjointed.

Granted this isn't that much easier than just animating on 2's or 3's and applying tweens, but it can save some effort.

Slight example: http://www.fedoramation.com/content/art/
c3po1.html

C-3PO there is in one symbol and each body part has its own layer inside that; no symbols-inside-symbols, save for the head. Note how the hands don't come off the wrists and the pneumatic tubes are mostly connected. Only the bottom right elbow tubes come undone in the middle of the animation.

It'd be nice if individual users could upload a generic 140x90 image to use in place of the Newgrounds standard icon. This would help people with scores of flashes they don't feel like wading through.

Metal Gear Awesome was great

It's one of the few entries I've seen that passed with a high score and kept increasing afterwards