The most important feature of Graphic symbols is that they will always be in sync with parent (Graphic) Timelines and the main Timeline. Graphics are useful, because their Timelines can be manipulated via the Properties panel.
Like Movie Clips, Graphic symbols can have any number of frames and layers. Graphic symbols are similar to Movie Clips except that they are not dynamic and cannot be targeted with ActionScript. You can place graphics in any of these states and then apply ActionScript to the instance of a button to add interactivity to your Flash movie. These are represented as keyframes in a button symbol's Timeline. Buttons have four states: Over, Up, Down, and Hit. Movie Clips can also be created dynamically at runtime and can also act as a container for other objects, such as external images. You will utilize Movie Clips in Chapters 3 and 5 to create custom effects and behaviors. Movie Clips can have Blend Modes and Filters applied to them to achieve sophisticated effects. They can have any number of layers and frames, but their Timelines are independent of all other Timelines. Movie Clips are dynamic, which means they can be targeted with ActionScript, the Flash programming language.
The act of manually moving the playhead back and forth on the Timeline is called scrubbing. If you are authoring content for video output, see the "Publishing for Broadcast" section in Chapter 5 for more details. When you convert artwork to a symbol, you have a choice of three possible symbol behaviors:
You can also apply effects such as Scale, Tint, Alpha, and Brightness to instances and apply Motion Tweens in combination with one or more effects without increasing file size. It's extremely efficient to reuse symbols as many times as possible. This is how Flash delivers smoothly streaming animations while maintaining small file sizes. No matter how many instances of a symbol reside on the Stage, Flash only needs to load the source symbol once. When you do so, the object on the Stage is referred to as an instance. Every Flash document has its own Library from which you can drag a symbol onto the Stage. You can convert anything you draw or import into a symbol, and there's a good reason to do so: When an object is converted into a symbol, it automatically becomes an item in the Flash document's Library. Symbols are the building blocks of Flash. Efficient use of symbols will facilitate the production of cutout-style animation in Flash. This process depends ultimately on your style of animation and the style of your character. The more times an object can be reused, the more efficient the file will be.Īfter you import your sketch into Flash, you should consider how the character's features could best work as individual objects. Will your character be walking, running, flying, or falling at any point throughout the project? Optimization and efficiency are key elements for a web project that needs to load quickly and play smoothly. Before rendering your character in Flash, consider how your character will need to move.