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Tips for Using Adobe Flash
Mushir sent in some excellent tips recently to help guide you through using Adobe Flash.
- Learn the basics! If you learn the basics in Flash you will be able to finish stuff so much more faster. Try out all the tools and learn what they do. You may find a tool you never have used, but it could be a very useful tool.
- Tutorials! There are several books that will teach you how to use Flash! There are also books made for specific things such as drawing or animation. If you don’t like to pay there are always tutorials on the internet that you can read. Sites such as Pixel2Life have hundreds of free Flash tutorials which you can read. If you like to learn visually you can search for video tutorials at YouTube.
- Change the frame-rate! The frame-rate when you open a new document in Flash is 12. If you change it to lets say 20 your animation will run much faster and it will look much smoother. But then you will have to draw more images than you would have to if the frame-rate was 12. It is recommended by most Flash users to use the frame-rate 18 or higher.
- Use layers! Making animations in Flash without layers is very hard. Have your background in the first layer. Then have your animation on a layer above the background layer. This way you wont have to draw a new background after every single frame.
- Show your animation to other people and get response. There are many sites where you can publish your Flash animation for other people to watch it. You may get harsh comments the first time but keep trying. Always listen to what other people have to say. This will help you a lot. Remember you don’t always have to do what others say but try it out and see it looks better their way.
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5 Comments
Nick R (MabusPwns)
March 7th, 2008
at 7:53pm
When I use flash, I keep the frame rate at 30fps standard for tv and such. Sure it means I need to draw a lot more, but it looks a lot better than the standard frame rates. I also recommend watching any of the adult swim cartoon line ups, about 75% of the shows are all flash animated such as Squidbillies, and Harvie Birdman Attorney At Law.
Kyle_vdk
March 7th, 2008
at 8:49pm
Thank you very much for this!
I have always loved Flash.. I have always wanted to buy the software, i have tried the trial, but i did not have any time to learn completely. Do you have an coupons for this Chris?
VistaMeetsNick
March 7th, 2008
at 9:09pm
Thanks Chris, I just started Adobe Flash, and once I first took a deep look into the program I had no idea what to do. After just viewing this post and seeing the pixel2life website…well it really helped thanks!
JackWebster
March 7th, 2008
at 11:33pm
The best thing for flash is to be taught by someone! I got off three days of Uni learning flash, and how to draw (for the first time in my life) and it was BRILLANT.
I’m not USian but there alot of flash classes in AU.
Jack
richard o'reilly
March 8th, 2008
at 4:22pm
Chris touches on the purpose of frames per second. I believe it’s important to explain why 12 frames a second looks choppy. It’s a theory called persistence of vision. I’ll spare details, but imagine a stack of sticky postits. Each sheet has an image baed on the prior, doing some sort of action (ie stick figure walking) THe slower you play it, the less film like it will look. Somewhere around 15 frames per/second our eye recognizes the chopyness. SO? keep it above 15 and your eyes will feel better as always, thanks to chris, and everyone else
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