Week 6 - Movie Clip Revision & IK/Bones

Step 1: Create your movieClips

1. Create a New Movie Clip Symbol and call it "carStill"
• Whilst in "carStill" state, draw a car (side on view) without wheels
2. Create a new MovieClip symbol and call it "wheelStill"
• Whilst in "carStill" state, draw a wheel with spokes (or any detail to show rotation)
3. Open "carStill" state and place "wheelStill" wheels from your Library on to your car (you may need to resize using the free transform tool)
4. Duplicate "carStill" in your library and call it "carMove"
5. Duplicate "wheelStill" in your library and call it "wheelMove"
6. Open "wheelMove" state and create a motion tween for the wheel.  Rotate the wheel once clockwise over 24 frames.
7. Open "carMove" state and view the properties panel
• Select the wheels on the stage and choose "Swap ..." in the properties panel.  Replace the wheels with "wheelMove"

You now have two cars in your library.  One with wheels that turn and one with wheels that don't turn.  Place an instance of each car on the stage and Test Preview your animation to make sure you have one with spinning wheels and one with stationary wheels.

Step 2: Animate car and Swap Symbols

• Motion Tween "carMove" - driving into the center of the stage and stopping, then driving off the stage. 

•  Use 3 separate motion tweens
• drive in
• stopped (this can be static - ie. not tweened if you wish)
• drive off
•  To create a new motion tween on the same layer
• create a blank keyframe after the 'drive in' motion tween
• copy the last frame of the 'drive in' motion tween
• paste the frame on to the blank keyframe
• repeat for 'drive out' motion tween
•  Your timeline should look like this (click to enlarge):

• Select the untweened Keyframe (grey colour)
• Select the car on the stage.  The properties panel should display that it is an instance of "carMove".  Swap "carMove" with "carStill"
• Test your animation scene

Step 3: Finishing Touches

• Apply motion easing to tweens to give the appearance of braking and acceleration
• Draw a traffic light
• Draw each light in an off position
• Keyframe 3 different light states (red, orange, green) and change one light to on for each frame
• Move keyframes to appropriate position on your timeline (eg car is stopped during red light)
• Draw background imagery
• Finished early? Why not try some exhaust fumes

Inverse Kinematics (Using the Bone Tool in Flash)

Watch the following tutorial:

Introduction to the Bone Tool



Recreate the Tree tutorial you have just watched.  Apply this technique to an item of your choice.