How to Make Flash Animations

Make Flash animations with Adobe animation software. The style of animation is basic and most projects are somewhat jerky, jumpy or otherwise unpolished. However, when people need quick and inexpensive do-it-yourself animation for websites, blogs and even advertisements, many create Flash animation to do the job.

To make Flash animations and to work in Flash you need the Adobe Flash Lite program on your computer. A 30-day free trial version is available on the Adobe Web site. When you are first starting out, it's helpful to pick a simple project, such as making a simple walking dog, to get used to the capabilities and quirks of Flash. Flash animation uses "tweened" movement, meaning a sequence of frames that are changed slightly and run together to give the illusion of movement. This saves you the painstaking process of hand-animating every frame of your project.

How to Make Flash Animations

1. Run through the Flash tutorial. It will introduce the basics of how to navigate through the program.
2. Create a new frame, or stage, to draw the dog figure (you can create a new frame with F7).
3. Draw the dog using the paintbrush tool. This is Frame 1.
4. Copy the finished dog frame 4 times (press F6 to copy). You'll be changing each drawing slightly so that when they're run in sequence, it will look as if the dog is walking.
5. Click on Frame 2 and erase just the dog's legs with the erase tool. Keep the head and body intact. To see how the legs were previously, select the Onion Skin button and the ghosted lines will reappear.
6. Draw the new legs in slightly different positions than the original.
7. Repeat the process for frames 3, 4 and 5. Mimic the direction a dog's legs would take while walking with the sequence of the frames to ensure smooth animation.
8. Test the Flash animation by selecting frame 1 and then selecting Enter.
9. Make minor adjustments to each frame as needed until you are satisfied with the animation.

Once you've learned the basics of how to make Flash animations, you can expand into more complicated projects by manipulating color, size and rotation of frames. Different effects can also be used, such as blur and blend. Flash can be used in a variety of applications, such as animated Web site buttons, avatars, short cartoons, greeting cards and even animated movies.